Aff

Links
 Link---AT: UBI
The aff is an essential first step to the alt – we assume their critique
Sculos 18(Bryant W. Sculos Florida International University, “Socialism & Universal Basic Income”,
2018, DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.6.1.007552)//BRownRice
The idea of providing a stipend to every person in a given country—or even across the globe— seems like it
would be a project that socialists would love. And while there are certainly a large number of socialists
that do or would support the establishment of a universal basic income (UBI), there are many
left criticisms of UBI that have produced a great deal of skepticism about the idea. Most of the critics of UBI
treat its advocates as though they believe UBI would solve all or most socioeconomic problems,
at least in the Global North.1 I have yet to come across any serious UBI advocate who takes such an
expansive position. My point here will be to provide reasons for why socialists should support a thick conception of
UBI as a kind of radical reform from within capitalism, as part of a broader left
agenda.2 In order to make this case, this essay will focus on three main contentions that are generally raised by left critics
of UBI: (1) UBI would be used to dismantle existing social welfare programs, leaving the poor
worse off than they were before; (2) UBI doesn’t do anything for workers within the workplace; and
(3) UBI doesn’t challenge capitalism. (1) First, it is quite true that not all UBI programs would be worth supporting. Any UBI program that

would have the likelihood of leaving the poor and vulnerable worse off should certainly be opposed by any socialist or progressive. This kind of welfare-state

replacement UBI is the kind that white supremacist and conservative thought-leader Charles
Murray and other libertarians often support. 3 However, simply because not all UBI programs
are worth supporting, does not mean that there are not thick or expansive conceptions of UBI
that absolutely are. An example of a conception of UBI that socialists should support would
be one that is—as the acronym requires—universal and also set at or above subsistence. This means that all
people, regardless of their ability or willingness to work, would at least be much more likely to
live a life without lacking any fundamental necessities. A subsistence (or higher) UBI would likely only be able to achieve the goal of
eradicating extreme poverty if it was also combined with a universal health care and tuition-free public higher education system. If the poor still had to pay or go into massive
Second, it is simply not true that
debt to afford basic health care and education, a subsistence UBI would be nearly functionally irrelevant—or worse. (2)

UBI is irrelevant to workers and the workplace—again provided we are discussing a thick
version of UBI. There are two key reasons why UBI would help workers in the workplace. First, if
workers did not rely entirely on their wage for their subsistence, they would likely be able to take
more aggressive positions in collective bargaining (Andy Stern, former president of the SEIU, has referred to UBI as a “national strike
fund”). 4 A subsistence UBI would decrease the opportunity-costs of hardline negotiating for higher wages,

better benefits, fewer hours, and better working conditions. Workers, in such a position, could also
demand greater democratic rights within the workplace. This is not to suggest that wages would cease to be a site of contention.
On the contrary, by providing a stronger foundation from which to negotiate wages and benefits, there would be an opportunity for an increase in labor struggles. The

second way that UBI would aid workers in the workplace is more speculative. If a subsistence
UBI were to be achieved, there is almost no way of imagining this taking place without massive
organized support from workers. It would need to be collective demand that itself would require organizing and mobilizing workers, alongside the
unemployed and homeless, and even stay-at-home moms and dads. The kind of social solidarity that such a radical policy

position like a subsistence-level UBI would require would undoubtedly have important
consequences for the organization of the workplace. (3) The idea that an expansive UBI program
could not be a direct challenge to capitalism is frankly laughable. There are two main reasons why a subsistence UBI (or
higher) could be a challenge to capitalism, but it is important to note that in the very short-term there is the chance of some increase in stability brought to the capitalist system
by the Keynesian effects of the policy, if enacted in even a single globally-crucial economy like the US, the EU, or even China or India. 5 This stability would be short-lived and
lead to progress towards socialism, for the reasons that follow. The first reason builds on the points made under the previous section: a
could

It
subsistence UBI that did not replace existing, or was implemented alongside expanded, social welfare programs would require a mass movement in order to be achieved.

would also take workers in enormous numbers out of the realm of necessity and closer to the
realm of freedom (as described by Marx). With a subsistence UBI, workers would no longer be forced to
work at low-paying, degrading, unsafe, or mindless jobs. These jobs would then likely become
the first sites of full automation. If systematically-compelled wage-labor is the sine qua non of
the capitalist mode of production, then a subsistence-or-above UBI would be a direct challenge
to the foundation of capitalism. Secondly, a thick UBI could change how people think about
their value in society. By declaring, not with mere rhetoric, but with serious policy, that all
people, regardless of status, effort, place of birth, gender, race, sexuality, or any other category,
are worthy of the dignity of the means to support themselves, society has a powerful opportunity
to evolve in a more just and democratic direction. It wouldn’t necessarily be a smooth transition, but it would certainly provide
the basis for a practicable transition from capitalism to an egalitarian democratic postcapitalism
(i.e., socialism). These two points are in direct opposition to the position articulated by Daniel Zamora in Jacobin. 6 Zamora argues that UBI reinforces the market
ideology by simply allowing more people to participate in consumption. What Zamora misses (though this is basically true of most socialist critics of UBI) is the progressive
decommodification of work and life in general that UBI can contribute to. If I don’t have to work or don’t want to work under undemocratic or unsafe conditions, I wouldn’t have
to.Yes, labor would still be commodified to some degree— but not universally or necessarily. In
the same way that we could imagine a world where basic necessities are not commodified but
luxury goods could be. With an expansive UBI, I wouldn’t be required to sell my labor to survive.
And while there would certainly still be a market for consumer goods at this stage, buying goods
in the market is not the defining trait of capitalism. With an expansive UBI, the connection between structurally-coerced labor and
one’s ability to live a (decent) life—the foundational relationship of the capitalist mode of production—would be progressively severed.7 Imagine the creative

“work” people could participate in of their own accord if they didn’t have to “get a job” to
survive. Remember, not all UBI proposals are created equal and therefore not all UBI plans
should be supported by those on the left. There are however very good reasons why a thick
conception of UBI should be part of any socialist project aiming beyond capitalism but moving
forward from within capitalism. There are no guarantees here, and it is imperative to think UBI within a much broader left program. There is, after all,
no good reason to think that any one or two policies or demands would ever be successful on their own, especially not without the mass movement any one of them would
necessarily need to have behind them in order to be achieved.

Tag
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03085147.2022.2131278)//BRownRice
Impact/Sustainability
 Impact---Geoengineering---2AC
Capitalist driven geoengineering is good and key to solving warming

1/ CLOUD SEEDING
Jacobo et. al 4/21(Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo, and Ginger Zee, 4-21-2023, "These geoengineering
technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say," ABC News,
https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?
id=98476205)//BRownRice

What to do when there isn't enough precipitation

Drought-stricken regions have been left scrambling to ensure water supplies after years of
minimal rainfall and snowpack.

One of the techniques already being used in several places in the U.S. is weather modification, or
cloud seeding, which involves injecting microscopic particles of silver iodide into the
atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.

The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy
enough to fall as rain or snow.
The practice could boost snowpack by up to 15% in one year, according to a 2020 study authored by
Sarah Tessendorf, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
That extra precipitation could be the difference between being able to irrigate agriculture during
the last three weeks of the dry season.

While the technique has been around for decades, interest has exploded in the past decade due
to the decades-long megadrought plaguing the Western U.S., which houses important bodies of
water, Garrett Cammans, president of North American Weather Consultants, one of the largest cloud
seeding companies in the country, told ABC News.

There are currently 42 cloud seeding projects across the U.S. with another 200 stations opening
up by next season.
The technology is helping to ease the effects of the drought in the American West, which has
reduced water levels in the Colorado River, one of the most important river systems in the country.

"We’re now seeing flows of the Colorado River we’ve never seen before since records were kept,"
Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.

The Bureau of Reclamation has pledged $2.4 billion in funding for cloud seeding projects to slow the
effects of drought on the Colorado River.

2/ SOLAR REFLECTION
Jacobo et. al 4/21(Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo, and Ginger Zee, 4-21-2023, "These geoengineering
technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say," ABC News,
https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?
id=98476205)//BRownRice
Alter how much sunlight the Earth absorbs
Solar geoengineering, which would involve pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect
sunlight, thus cooling Earth, has been a "controversial" topic in recent years, Paul Wennberg, a
professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental science and engineering at the California Institute
of Technology, told ABC News.
The tiny particles are released about 10 miles into the stratosphere and create a "reflective
blanket," the idea being to reflect about 1% of total incoming sunlight, Chris Field, director of the
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, told ABC News.

"You could basically cool the Earth down because it's absorbing less sunlight," Wennberg said.

Scientists already know this is possible due to the eruptions of large, sulfur-rich volcanoes,
Wennberg said. About a month after large amounts of sulfur gases are emitted from the volcano into
Earth's upper atmosphere, the particles that form reflect away a small amount of sunlight, Wennberg said.

Earth's temperature temporarily dropped 1 degree Celsius in 1991 following the large eruption at
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Solar geoengineering, however, is not considered a viable solution in the long term because the particles
will eventually leave the atmosphere and temperatures will return to normal, Wennberg said.

Therefore, adding sulfur and other constituents to the stratosphere would need to be a continuous effort.

"Not only would you have to do it forever, you'd have to do more and more of it over time," Wennberg
said. "And if you ever stopped, the Earth would rebound very, very quickly to the state that you would
have without those particles."

In addition, the infrared blanket placed over the clouds prevents them from radiating energy upward,
which could cause the clouds to break up and lead to strong warming, according to Cal Tech.

Other approaches to solar engineering include increasing the abundance of bright, reflective
clouds in coastal areas, which could be more effective because they reflect more sunlight going
over a smaller part of the Earth's surface, Field said.

3/ CARBON CAPTURING – capitalist innovation is key

Jacobo et. al 4/21(Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo, and Ginger Zee, 4-21-2023, "These geoengineering
technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say," ABC News,
https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?
id=98476205)//BRownRice

Pluck the carbon straight out of the atmosphere

As greenhouse gases continue to be emitted into Earth's atmosphere, carbon sequestration,
the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide, is being touted by
experts as an effective way to lower temperatures.
The method is aimed "try to clean up the mess we've made ," Wennberg said.
"It's effectively trying to do what the Earth will do in a millennium if we were to wait ," Wennberg said. "But in this
case, we're trying to speed it all up so that we can get back to lower atmospheric carbon levels ."
One of the biggest challenges to implementing the technology is cost, Wennberg added.
Last year, the U.S. Energy Department pledged
$2.6 billion in funding for the Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program, which
aims to create storage technologies and infrastructure at major industrial sources of carbon
dioxide, such as cement, pulp and paper, iron and steel and chemical production facilities.
 Impact---Space---2AC
Capitalist production is key to sustaining space col – that’s solves every existential
threat
Kovic 19(Marko Kovic is the co-founder and president of the Zurich Institute of Public Affairs Research,
“The future of energy”, March 2019)//BRownRice
Existential risks are risks that might lead to the extinction of humankind [1]. Natural existential risks (such as
asteroids that might crash into Earth) are basically constant. The risks of a giant asteroid crashing into Earth today is the same as it was
500 years ago. Anthropogenic, man-made existential risks , on the other hand, are growing in number and
severity. They are a side-effect of technological progress: The more we develop technologically, the
greater man-made existential risks become. Nuclear weapons, to name only one example, are a direct consequence of
scientific and technological progress. There are different approaches to existential risk mitigation . One approach is to develop
targeted strategies for specific existential risks. If we want to reduce the existential risk posed by nuclear weapons, then we can and should develop
specific strategies for that risk. Another approach is to
develop and pursue what can be called meta-strategies
that target all existential risks at once. One of most effective meta-strategies for tackling
existential risks in general is space colonization: If we manage to establish permanent and
self-sustainable human habitats beyond Earth, then our proverbial existential eggs are not all in
one basket anymore. For example, if disaster strikes on Earth, but there are billions of humans living
on Venus and Mars, humankind would continue to exist even with Earth-humans gone. Because of
existential risks, a long-term future in which humankind still exists almost certainly has to be a future
in which humankind has succeeded in colonizing space. Today, even though we regularly venture into space, we do
not yet have space colonization capabilities. There are a number of technological challenges
that we need to overcome in order to become capable of space colonization. One of those challenges is energy.
There are several reasons why. First, if we establish permanent and self-sustaining habitats beyond Earth, those habitats will have to power themselves
somehow. Even
if our goal is to establish only one small colony on Mars that consists of no more
than 10’000 people, that colony will have to have a reliable supply of energy at its disposal . Second,
habitats beyond Earth will almost certainly be less hospitable than Earth in the early stages of space colonization. There is no planet or moon in the
vicinity of our Solar system that is as pleasant as Earth. For example, we
can easily survive a couple of days without
electricity on Earth. In a colony on Mars, on the other hand, a couple of days without electricity
would almost certainly mean swift and, for those affected, horrific death, because Mars is much colder than
Earth and contains no breathable air in its atmosphere. In other words: The energy requirements for sustaining one
human life are likely to be much greater beyond Earth than they are on Earth. Third, energy
sources will also play a role for transit in space. Space colonization means that (many) more humans than
today will be voyaging through space. In order to make long-term space voyage possible, we will
need to have adequate energy sources available on board, both for the purpose of life support as
well as for propulsion. 1.2 Criteria for colonization-conducive energy sources If future
energy sources are an important part of space colonization capabilities, what kind of energy
sources do we need? Obviously (and unfortunately), we do not know with certainty today what energy sources might be available in the
future. But we can specify a set of criteria that future energy sources have to meet as much as possible in order to help achieve the goal of space
colonization. There are at least five such criteria: 1. Portability. Future energy sources must be as portable as possible so that
they can be used in as many circumstances as possible. For example, a hydroelectric power plant has very low portability. A spaceship could never be
powered by a hydroelectric power plant. 2. Availability. The energy sources have to be readily available, both in a
geographical and a temporal scope. If, for example, some new form of fuel was very hard to obtain, then that fuel would
represent a source of energy with very low availability; almost no one could use it. 3. Sustainability. The energy sources
should not be finite and easily depletable, but ideally abundantly available and practically
unlimited (or “renewable”). For example, crude oil is not sustainable, because its quantity is limited to the steadily depleting reserves
on Earth. 4. Energy Density. Per unit of mass, future energy sources should oer as much energy as
possible. For example, a kilogram of wood provides less energy than a kilogram of crude oil.
Technically speaking, this criterion is not energy density but specific energy; energy density refers to energy per unit of volume. I use the term “energy
density” for the sake of simplicity. In cases where energy density (or specific energy) is not really applicable because to fuel in the traditional sense is
used, we can approximate energy density by looking at power density (e.g., wind), the energy output per unit of surface area. 5. Acceptable
levels of risk. Future sources of energy should create as few and as small risks as possible. Through the lens of these criteria, we can take a
look at existing sources of energy and at potential future sources of energy and assess whether and to what degree they are “future-proof”. The
better an energy source meets the five criteria outlined above, the more “future proof” it is, in
the sense of having high utility for sustaining human habitats beyond Earth.
 Impact---Space---1AR
Space col is key to escaping a decaying planet – it’s sustainable BUT global
capitalist innovation is key to sustenance
Trumic 22(Ajla Trumic, Science & Tech Editor, 11-27-2022, "The Necessity for Space Colonization,"
Monarch, https://amhsnews.org/7733/opinions/the-necessity-for-space-colonization/)//BRownRice
It seems odd to associate extinction with that of
the human race, yet with global warming, overpopulation,
and the threat of self-annihilation through weaponry, this is becoming a reality. Humanity is left with
only one opportunity to ensure our continued survival: we must escape. But where do we find
our future sanctuary?
Why the cosmos, of course!
From the oppressors to the oppressed, humans don’t have a good history of colonization. Space colonization
is an entirely different frontier. This would involve terraforming a planet or moon, a process in
which scientists and machines transform the area of settlement into one suitable for human life .
Then, the first humans would create small communities in which they attempt to survive and reproduce. If all
goes well, the colonies begin to expand, replicating similar conditions that existed on Earth. Every object we hope to colonize will undergo a similar
process. The universe is immensely large, ranging to approximately 93 billion light years in diameter, where the beauties
of cosmological
expansion are constant and continual. Evidently, we have a lot of space to stretch out, and it seems
necessary to do so.
By dispersing the human population onto other astronomical objects, we would likely decrease
the effects of human-led climate change on any single planet. According to NASA, human-led climate change has
spiked since the mid-20th century, causing disastrous effects. The increase in temperature has melted polar ice caps, caused alarming droughts, and
increased the effects of natural disasters. In future years, the temperature increase is projected to cause a whopping $54 trillion in damages—an
inconceivably large number. Compare this to the estimated cost of operations and launch of a Mars colonization mission which falls in the range of
$100 to $500 billion per mission. Although this number is rather large, it may be a good thing.
“
What gift to a struggling species is better than that of another home ? The natural human
tendency to look out for ourselves might ultimately force us to peacefully work together.”
With the high price of colonization, no one country can finance it. Multiple countries ought to
put aside their differences and unite—not as individuals plagued with distinct motives—but
simply as one species: humans. Large countries such as the US, China, and Russia must band together to finance
the colonization of astronomical objects so that humanity has a second chance. What gift to a struggling
species is better than that of another home? While it seems unlikely for these peoples to set aside their differences and exist simply as humans, the
natural human tendency to look out for ourselves might ultimately force us to peacefully work together. This is, perhaps, one
of the only
times in which inherent human greed is quite desirable, for this is what will push us
toward the stars. Imagine the reaction humanity would experience if we were to terraform a
desolate planet such as Mars, Earthlings making decisions as a single entity to design a planet
necessary for human life to persist.
Further, with our species being safely distributed across numerous new homes, the very real threat of one major event wiping
out our entire species is safely avoided. Space colonization will not prevent an outbreak of nuclear warfare. It will,
however, ensure that humanity survives and continues to evolve into a more advanced species which has the
opportunity to learn from the mistakes of its ancestors.
Given the dangers of our world, it seems entirely necessary to disperse humanity across the cosmos to avoid extinction. As world-renowned theoretical
physicist Stephen Hawking once said, “The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one
planet.”
Next time, when the overbearing winds of the day settle into a slight beat as the twinkling stars rise into view, venture from the safe chambers of your
home to view your place as a subject within the universe’s creation. Close your eyes, look up, pick a single star, and hope that—for the sake of humanity
—we may reach there some time soon.
 Impact---AT: Greenwashing
“Greenwashing” is a meaningless buzzword which makes solutions impossible –
reject their framing
Makower 1/17(Joel Makower is chairman and co-founder of GreenBiz Group, a media and events
company focusing at the intersection of business, technology and sustainability. For more than 30 years,
through his writing, speaking and leadership, he has helped companies align pressing environmental and
social issues with business success, 1-17-2023, "Why we can't stop talking about greenwashing,"
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-we-cant-stop-talking-about-greenwashing)//BRownRice
Everywhere I look these days there’s greenwashing. Not necessarily actual greenwashing.
I’m talking about the word itself.
It’s everywhere, from media missives to activist accusations to regulatory remedies on both
sides of the Atlantic. There are academic papers, investor research reports, conference sessions and no
small number of online rants in which the G-word is tossed around with abandon.
And whenever the word comes up, there seems to be general head nodding and handwringing:
"Greenwashing? Of course! It’s a huge problem, and we need to do something about it!"
It would appear that greenwashing is one of the great ills of our day.
But is it? That’s an open question.
Longtime readers know that I’ve been pondering this question for years. I’ve asked, "Is greenwashing really as bad a problem as some are making it out
to be?" (in 2008); questioned the findings of an iconic report at the time called "The Seven Sins of Greenwashing" (in 2009); and made the case that the
biggest greenwashers may actually be consumers (in 2010). More recently, I asked whether "greenwash" is the new "fake news" (in 2021); looked at
"greenhushing," in which companies avoid talking about sustainability altogether (in 2022); and even offered up a satiric set of tips on "how to
greenwash like a pro" (also 2022).
But the more I’ve written on the topic, the
less clear I’ve become about how greenwashing should be defined,
how that definition seems to be shifting and how much of a problem it really is.
My topline conclusion: There’s a whole lotta corporate hyperbole going on, but roughly an equal amount
of reticence by companies to talk about their sustainability commitments, goals and
achievements. Much of the hyperbole stems from companies’ genuine desire to be seen as a
leader, or at least a player, in addressing sustainability challenges, without necessarily giving
ample thought about how they communicate those messages.
I’m not alone in being confused. Just last week, Bloomberg reported in an article about the legal definition of
greenwashing: "Nobody knows for sure, and that’s causing some big regulatory problems." It quoted
a financial analyst: "The battle to stamp out greenwashing continues to be foiled by the lack of a clear
and common definition across jurisdictions."
I couldn’t agree more.
Last week also saw publication of yet another breathless report, this one from the usually studious nonprofit Planet Tracker, proclaiming that
greenwashing "has become a many-headed beast" and is "becoming increasingly sophisticated." The authors expressed surprise "that it remains so
prevalent despite being called out by NGOs, the media and, increasingly, regulators." It sextupled down on the topic, suggesting that there are six
"shades" of greenwash: "greencrowding"; "greenlighting"; "greenshifting,"; "greenlabeling"; "greenrinsing"; and the aforementioned "greenhushing."
The Planet Tracker report — like so many others on the topic, however well-intended — is nearly as sloppy as the companies it criticizes. For one thing,
it fails to adequately define greenwashing, assuming that readers will somehow know it when they see it. Plus, it conflates the marketing of consumer
products with financial institutions making ESG and sustainability claims about their funds and investments. (To further the confusion, Planet Tracker
suggested that "greenhushing" involves companies "under-reporting or hiding their sustainability credentials in order to evade investor scrutiny.")
The rise of ESG-themed funds and other investment vehicles is absolutely worth scrutinizing. For starters, there’s a lack of transparency about what
most of these funds actually claim to do. Most funds’ goal is to reduce investor risk by picking well-managed firms, as opposed to companies making a
positive impact. As a result, many values-driven investors are being sold a lie, if only by omission.
Also, we’re talking about trillions of dollars in individuals’ savings and retirement funds, so being ethically pure is important, as it is with any
investment marketing. That hasn’t always been the case, and scrutiny of these funds is both welcome and warranted.
Hype and glory
But what about more quotidian products and services — the consumer purchases most likely to
be scrutinized by activists? How sinister are companies’ efforts to "green up" their image? That’s
debatable, and the crux of that debate comes back to the question: How do you define
greenwash?
The internet, unsurprisingly, is chockablock with definitions. Here are five examples, culled from sources I consider to be
reasonably well-regarded:
Encyclopedia Britannica: "a form of deceptive marketing in which a company, product or business practice is falsely or excessively promoted as being
environmentally friendly"
Investopedia: "the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound"
Merriam-Webster: "the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally
damaging than it really is"
National Geographic: "a form of misinformation often used to entice an aspiring green consumer"
Scientific American:"what happens when a hopeful public eager to behave responsibly about the environment is presented with ‘evidence’ that makes
an industry or a politician seem friendly to the environment when, in fact, the industry or the politician is not as wholly amicable as it or he might be"
Note that most
of these focus on a company’s products, specifically those aimed at consumers,
although some definitions extend to business practices and even to politicians. None of them
singles out investors.
But even these reasonably straightforward definitions are subject to broad interpretation. For example, Britannica refers to an environmental
attribute being "falsely or excessively promoted." Well, which is it? "False" implies lying,
perhaps even fraud. "Excessive" suggests hyperbole or maybe wishful thinking, neither of which
is illegal or, in most cases, immoral or unethical.
Now, I can already hear my more activist readers chafing at that last sentence: "Isn’t it immoral
to position yourself as an environmental leader when that’s not the case? After all, the future of
humanity is at stake!"
Perhaps. But given the lack of definitions about what it means to be an environmental leader — after
all the standards, rankings and frameworks, it’s still largely in the eye of the beholder — and what
constitutes greenwash, I maintain that policing such claims will be difficult at best. Moreover, most such hyperbole isn’t
qualitatively different from other marketing claims. Are Gillette products demonstrably "the
best a man can get"? Is Folgers coffee undeniably "the best part of waking up"? Is Disneyland
truly "the happiest place on earth"?
You already know the answers. And yes, there’s a false equivalency here — a cup of joe versus a livable planet. The question is to what standard should
we hold companies when speaking about sustainability. Can a genuinely committed company boast about its efforts and commitments if it isn’t perfect
from a sustainability perspective? What can companies reasonably say when — like nearly every company — they are only part way toward a long-term
transformation to a more sustainable business model?
Nagging question
Which brings us back to that nagging question: What is greenwashing? Is it blatantly deceptive marketing? Is it limited to products? What about claims
a company makes that aren’t in the form of marketing and don’t directly relate to its products or services? Net zero, for example.
The lack of a definition is problematic for companies, to put it mildly. Without adequate guardrails, companies
have little guidance about what’s allowable and what’s not. And the rest of us — those seeking to understand which companies to work for, buy from,
invest in, etc. — are left scratching our collective heads or ranting about companies whose claims just don’t feel like they should be true.
If we don’t know what greenwashing is, how can we avoid it or fight it?
Regulations could help, at least in Europe, where the French Climate and Resilience Law, which into effect this month, and the European
Union's proposed Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, slated for 2024-25, "paint a much clearer picture of the processes companies will have to
adopt in order to make any environmental claim without risk of greenwashing," as Sourcemap CEO Leo Bonanni pointed out recently.
In the United States, however, there are no such laws. The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed rules
governing climate risk disclosure, but that is aimed primarily at investors. (A final rule is expected this spring.) And the Federal Trade Commission last
month requested public comment for "potential updates" to its longstanding Green Guides to include terms that didn’t exist when the guides were last
revised, in 2012. But the Green Guides apply primarily to consumer products, and the FTC has been notoriously anemic in its efforts to take on
purported greenwashers, except in the most egregious cases.
So, where does that leave us? To be sure, some environmental marketing claims need to be called out: a company’s efforts to reduce plastic packaging
or use more plant-based plastics while simultaneously churning out billions more plastic containers every year; an oil company that touts its efforts to
decarbonize its products and services but continues to invest in new exploration and extraction of oil and gas; any company whose net-zero claims are
based entirely on the emissions from their own operations and don’t include the full life-cycle of their products and processes.
But simply to call "Greenwash!" on anything and everything is counterproductive. It’s a lazy
and uninspired criticism that doesn’t really address the challenge: companies wanting to be
seen as part of the solution in a world that views them as anything but.
 Impact---AT: Thermodynamics/Physics
Thermodynamics is wrong. It does matter what technology is used---renewables
like nuclear fission and renewables work and are better.
John Asafu-Adjaye 15. Associate professor of economics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane,
Australia. Et al. “An Ecomodernist Manifesto”. April 2015. https://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-
english
High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an exception and have the
potential to provide many tens of terawatts on a few percent of the Earth’s surface.
Present-day solar technologies will require substantial innovation to meet this standard and the
development of cheap energy storage technologies that are capable of dealing with highly variable energy generation at
large scales.
Nuclear fission today represents the only present-day zero-carbon technology with the demonstrated
ability to meet most, if not all, of the energy demands of a modern economy. However, a variety of social,
economic, and institutional challenges make deployment of present-day nuclear technologies at scales necessary to achieve significant climate
mitigation unlikely. A new generation of nuclear technologies that are safer and cheaper will likely be necessary for
nuclear energy to meet its full potential as a critical climate mitigation technology.
In the long run, next-generation solar, advanced nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion represent the most
plausible pathways toward the joint goals of climate stabilization and radical decoupling of
humans from nature. If the history of energy transitions is any guide, however, that transition will take time. During that
transition, other energy technologies can provide important social and environmental
benefits. Hydroelectric dams, for example, may be a cheap source of low-carbon power for poor nations
even though their land and water footprint is relatively large. Fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage can likewise provide
substantial environmental benefits over current fossil or biomass energies.
 Impact---AT: LTRPF
Studies prove Okishio’s theorem is true. Even Marx would agree.
Li et al. 18 — Bangxi Li, an associate professor of political economy at the School of Social Sciences,
Tsinghua University, holds a Ph.D. in economics at Waseda University, Shan Gu, holds B.S. and Ph.D.
degrees from the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Junshang Liang, Assistant Professor at
the Department of Economics at Nankai University, holds a PhD, Economics, University of Massachusetts
Amherst, a MA, Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a BA, Economics, Renmin
University of China, 2018 (“The Empirical Relevance of the Okishio Theorem: An Autoregressive
Distributed Lag Approach,” American Economic Association, n.d., Available Online at
https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2021/preliminary/paper/G8siA8ti, Accessed 06-28-2023)//rjain
In this paper we have found strong empirical evidence supporting the Okishio Theorem using data
for the US non-financial economy, though its empirical robustness at more general level is left for future research. To conclude this
paper, let us return to a fundamental question: What is Okishio’s Theorem really about? Or put differently: How could a profitable
technical change not raise the equilibrium rate of profit given the real wage rate is fixed? To us, the Okishio Theorem is nothing
more than a formal confirmation of the economic intuition that if the cost of production is
reduced, the economic efficiency of the system will be raised. This rise in economic efficiency, in
the new equilibrium, is either expressed in rising profitability (if the real wage rate is fixed), or
in rising real wage rate (if the rate of profit is fixed), or in both. The actual distribution of the fruits from the
technical change fundamentally depends on class struggle, rather than any ex ante principles.
[Table Omitted]
Perhaps a more important question to most Marxists is: Does the Okishio Theorem invalidate Marx’s law? It depends on what one
sees as the assumption of Marx’s law, given its ambiguity in (Marx, 1962, Chapter 13) which is only in a raw state and published
posthumously thanks to Engels’s editing efforts. Most of the time Marx assumes a constant rate of
exploitation, but sometimes states the law also holds even if the rate of exploitation is rising.
Roemer (1981, 102–3) proves that in the context of capital-using and labor-saving (CU-LS,
a special type of rising organic composition of capital), a fixed real wage rate entails a rising rate
of exploitation. If a constant rate of exploitation is instead assumed, the rate of profit could rise
or fall due to a profitable CU-LS technical change (Laibman, 1982; Bidard, 2004; Foley, 2009);
in the case of rising rate of exploitation, a falling rate of profit might still be compatible with a
profitable CU-LS technical change as long as the real wage rate rise to some degree; in the case
of fixed real wage rate, there is no room for the rate of profit to fall. Only when one interprets Marx’s law as
that the rate of profit must fall due to a profitable CU-LS technical change no matter how high the rate of exploitation becomes, is
Marx’s law nullified by the Okishio Theorem that serves as a counterexample. This might be too extreme an interpretation that Marx
himself might not endorse.
If Marx were alive, he would not be surprised by the Okishio Theorem at all. When he is writing
about the effect of increasing labor productivity in the sector that produces means of production on the profitability of other sectors,
he comments:
The characteristic feature of this kind of saving of constant capital arising from the progressive development of industry is that the
rise in the rate of profit in one line of industry depends on the development of the productive power of labour in another. Whatever
falls to the capitalist’s advantage in this case is once more a gain produced by social labour, if not a product of the labourers he
himself exploits. Such a development of productive power is again traceable in the final analysis to the social nature of the labour
engaged in production; to the division of labour in society; and to the development of intellectual labour, especially in the natural
sciences. What the capitalist thus utilises are the advantages of the entire system of the social division of labour. It is the
development of the productive power of labour in its exterior department, in that department which supplies it with means of
production, whereby the value of the constant capital employed by the capitalist is relatively lowered and consequently the rate of
profit is raised. (Marx and Engels, 1981, pp. 85).
As Marx has rightly predicted, if we assume the rise in labor productivity was a result of a cost-reducing
technical change, the relative price of the products in that “exterior department” is proved to
decline necessarily (Dietzenbacher, 1989). The consequent rise in the rate of profit in any other
department that use the cheapened means of production can be interpreted as a rise of
the general rate of profit, either because of the ubiquitous use of the cheapened means of
production, or because of the interlocking input-output relationships. Therefore, not only
has Shibata (1934, 1939) predicted the Okishio Theorem, as is acknowledged by Okishio (1961),
but also has Marx.
 Impact---AT: Healthcare
Values shouldn’t come before empirics. There are many capitalisms and markets,
but the empirical record shows market societies generating material, social, and
moral advantages over nonmarket alternatives.
Storr and Klutsey, 21—vice president of Academic and Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at
George Mason University, the Don C. Lavoie Senior Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program in Philosophy,
Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center and an associate professor of economics at George Mason
University; director of academic outreach at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (Virgil and
Benjamin, “Liberalism and Markets,”
https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2021/02/05/liberalism-and-markets/, dml)
STORR: I did. I was very lucky. I’m benefiting from the inequalities in a lot of ways. Certainly in a market society, though, some people will have more
and others will have less. It turns out, though, that when
you look at the evidence, inequality is way worse in
nonmarket societies than it is in market societies, and for a lot of reasons. One, it’s much better to be poor
in a market society than in a nonmarket society. The poorest in market societies are better off than the poorest in
nonmarket societies.
In fact, the poorest in some market societies—like, say, the U.S.—are much better than the richest in some nonmarket societies.
You can name a number of nonmarket, less-developed countries. Even if inequality in the U.S. is as bad as they say, it’s not the social problem that
people seem to think it is because it’s better to be poor here than it is to be poor anywhere else. That’s one reason.
Another reason, though, is that it turns out market societies are more mobile than nonmarket societies. In market
societies, the rich become poor and the poor can become rich. That’s a feature of market societies. That
kind of mobility is less prevalent and less present in nonmarket societies. Again, even if inequality was
a problem that was as bad as people thought it was in market societies, the social costs associated with that, the social concerns associated with
that, are mitigated by the fact that in market societies the rich can become poor and the poor can become rich.
But it turns out that when you look at the evidence, that economic inequality is actually worse in
nonmarket societies. You look at things like Gini coefficients that measure the gap between the rich
and the poor in various countries, and nonmarket societies are much more unequal. That said, I
think that’d be my first pushback. I do think people are annoyed with inequality, but mostly—and this goes back to my earlier question—I think that
they’re annoyed when they believe that the people on the top didn’t get there by their own efforts. They didn’t really earn what they have. And they
believe that the poorest amongst us are all artificially kept down.
I know that it gets expressed as an anger about inequality, but I really think when you examine it, when you unpack it, it’s really a concern about
legitimacy. It’s maybe a concern about transparency. Most of us, most people are okay with LeBron James being a millionaire. In fact, many will say
that he’s probably underpaid, that LeBron James isn’t rich enough, given his talents and what he’s managed to accomplish. We’re less comfortable with
the CEO who led a company into bankruptcy getting the golden parachute.
We’re not comfortable with the wealthy buying privilege or political access, but that’s not a
concern with inequality per se. That’s a concern with the legitimacy of the process that generated the
wealth in the first place, or a concern about how transparent our systems are and the capacity and ability of people
to take advantage of the opportunities for rent-seeking and cronyism and privilege. That’s a
different sort of thing, to my mind, and I think that’s much more what’s behind when people decry inequality.
KLUTSEY: This also goes back to your earlier point. How much of this is just a misunderstanding of terms, then? You point out the importance of
storytelling and ethics in your work. How do we use better rhetoric to change this misunderstanding, if you have any thoughts on that?
STORR: I don’t know that it’s rhetoric as much as it’s inconsistency. Let’s say you claim to be a liberal; you claim to be pro-market, and then you’re not
as hard as you maybe should be on cronyism. I think people observe that and they go, “Well, maybe you’re not really a liberal.” But they also go, “Well,
maybe this system, this market thing that you’re defending, isn’t really this beautiful space that you’re talking about. Maybe it’s something that is
corrupt in the ways that we obviously see this cronyism is corrupt.”
I don’t know that that’s a rhetorical problem. I think it’s a consistency of applying one’s ideals. If someone’s going to defend markets, that means you
defend the markets against people who would use regulation to stifle markets, but you also defend markets against people who would use government
to give them unfair advantages in markets. If you do one and not the other, then I think it makes it really hard for people to disentangle, on the one
hand, what the market system is, and what it delivers and what it does, from the instantiations of the market system that they see that are rife with
privilege and cronyism and all these other things.
Markets and Civil Society
KLUTSEY: Really interesting. This is a quote from your book, and I’m referring to Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? It says, “Our market
relationships can develop into meaningful social relationships that can sometimes become
deeper than our familial connections. Our market activities also bring us into fellowship
with people across the globe and across ethnicities and nationalities that we might not
otherwise encounter. The market thus makes it possible for diverse individuals to
peacefully reconcile their plans, and so, create favorable conditions for feelings of
friendship.”
This is really interesting because we’ve been talking a lot about how we engage in civil discourse and how we foster civic friendships and relationships.
Can you walk us through how markets do this?
STORR: Yes. This is an observation we make in our book, but it’s not one that’s unique to us. It’s a feature of markets that has been recognized for a
long time. Adam Smith talks about how people working in the same trade, because of their consistent interactions with one another in that trade, can
develop feelings of friendship that can mirror brotherhoods. He made that observation.
I think it comes down to the fact that we’re social beings. One of the things that markets do is they bring people together. Markets
throw
people—often with similar backgrounds, similar skills—in spaces where they work with one another, and because
we’re social beings, that frequent interaction often develops into more than just a commercial
relationship. [Mark] Granovetter talks about our interactions in the market becoming overlaid with social content.
Just think about buying a house. If you’ve bought a house, you know you end up spending a ton of time with your realtor, not just talking about the
houses that you might want or not, but you end up having exchanges about your family and your goals and your plans for the future, and those lead into
conversations about his or her family and her goals and her future. That social aspect is a natural consequence of the underlying market interactions. I
think that’s the way that markets have been and can be social spaces.
KLUTSEY: That’s interesting. As I read Tyler Cowen’s book The Complacent Class, and also recently Robert Talisse’s book Overdoing Democracy, they
both talk about this phenomenon of sorting, whereby we’re increasingly putting ourselves into geographical spaces and virtual groups, and putting
ourselves into places that we’re very comfortable with, which is good. The market provides opportunities for us to match ourselves in ways that we
prefer.
At the same time, we’ve also become more segregated and more polarized as a result, whereby we consider those who are not part of our groups
negatively sometimes. Is this just part of human nature? Is this something the market system fosters? Or is it just that we are tribal as individuals and
as people, and this is just one of the things that results from that?
STORR: Have we become more segregated and polarized? I guess I think just the opposite. As segregated and polarized as we are today, could we be
less segregated and polarized than we were 50 years ago, 200 years ago—pick your time period? Of course, we’re sorting ourselves geographically and
virtually into groups that we’re more comfortable with, and human nature maybe is to be comfortable with people who look like us and think like us
and like the same things. I think that’s a part of human nature. I think that’s probably always been true.
But one of the things I think is underappreciated about the social changes that have accompanied the spread of markets and the growth of markets is
that they’ve changed what we mean when we say someone looks like us or thinks like us or likes the same things as us. That used to mean—50 years
ago, 200 years ago, what have you—that used to mean that the person is from my family or maybe from my village or maybe shares the same religion or
race.
Now that means something entirely different. Now that means people who are fans of the Lakers or people who like Star Wars or people who listen to
Beyoncé or people who studied sociology in college or people who listen to this podcast. These groupings cut against and cut across racial and ethnic
and national, religious and even political lines. And these groupings aren’t rigid. That’s a different kind of segregation and polarization than the kind
that we were worried about in the past. It’s a kind of sorting that’s less parochial and less problematic.
Markets Make Us Moral
KLUTSEY: Yeah. In fact, in Robert Talisse’s book, he talks about how negative attitudes towards interparty marriages are much higher now than
interracial or interfaith or what have you, which is really interesting and does go to your point. Now, contrary to market critics, you maintain that the
markets are moral spaces and that markets do make us moral. Can you elaborate on this? How do markets make
us moral?
STORR: In our book, Ginny and I, as you say, find that people in market societies will tend to be more moral. By that we mean
more altruistic, less materialistic, less corrupt, more likely to be cosmopolitan, more
likely to be tolerant of others. That’s what we mean by that, as well as more trusting and more trustworthy.
So we have a particular kind of conception of morality that’s going on there, and we find that market societies are positively
associated with measures of morality along those margins.
Then the question is, what causes market societies to outperform nonmarket societies on these measures of morality? We argue that there’s two
features of markets that allow them to act as moral training grounds in this way. The first is
that market interactions are opportunities to learn about others, and so every trade—every single
trade—is an opportunity to cheat. It’s an opportunity for the person selling the good to lie about the thing that they’re selling you
and trick you into overpaying for something that they’re trying to deliver. It’s an opportunity for the person paying for the good to promise to pay but to
not really pay. Every single market transaction gives us that opportunity.
When a market interaction goes through, when it’s successful, we learn something about the person we’re
dealing with. If they cheat us, we learn that they’re a cheat. If they don’t cheat us, we learn that, well, at least in this interaction, they’ve been an
honest broker. If we have multiple interactions with them, we might learn that, actually, I know something about this person’s character because given
their ability to cheat me multiple times, they didn’t, so I know something about you now.
The same is true in working with someone. If you’re in an office space with someone, or you’re in a factory with someone, you
know, well, this is the kind of person that’s lazy, or this is the kind of person that shirks. This is the kind of person when they’re stressed, they’re mean
to their fellows. Or, this is the kind of person that handles stress in a way that I find appealing, or what have you. You learn that this is the kind of
person with integrity or not. So markets in a lot of ways reveal our moral characters. To the extent that we want to be
associated with good people and don’t want to be associated with bad people, markets give us an opportunity to sort those kinds
of people out. That’s one way that markets act as moral training grounds.
The other way that markets act as moral training grounds is that they not only reveal character, but they
give us an opportunity to reward people who behave in ways that we morally approve of and to punish people who behave in ways that we
disapprove of. So the trustworthy mechanic earns a premium. We’re willing to go to them even though they cost a little bit more. The trustworthy
contractor earns a premium. We’re willing to pay the trustworthy contractor more than we’re willing to pay the one that cheated us or the one that
cheated our friend or the one that, based on the Yelp reviews, seems to have cheated multiple people. The conscientious babysitter makes more money.
Markets give us the
ability to reward good behavior, and so markets incentivize good behavior.
Because human beings are actually pretty good at detecting whether or not somebody’s being
fraudulently nice or is genuinely nice, it actually over time trains us into
being nicer people. I think those are the two ways that markets act as moral training grounds, and that that’s why we think
at least you observe market societies outperforming nonmarket societies when you look at these measures of morality.
Restricting Markets Has Moral Consequences
KLUTSEY: Now, given the level of polarization that we see in our society—and we talked about this earlier, that they’re not necessarily along certain
lines that they were before, but now it’s between parties and things like that—what are your thoughts on how we might leverage markets to help us to
depolarize?
STORR: One of the implications of the argument that, perhaps, I’ve been making and that Ginny and I make in the book is that when we limit markets,
that has—and this part has always been recognized—that has economic consequences, right? But if we’re right that markets
are spaces
that promote morality, and a part of morality might be being more pluralistic or being more
tolerant or being more cosmopolitan, then if what we’re saying is correct, limiting markets also has a
moral consequence.
The greater the extent that markets are limited, the less likely that it’s going to allow for
the cultivation of these kinds of positive virtues. If we’re correct that markets make us more tolerant, then
limiting markets is actually cutting against pluralism, for instance. It’s actually pushing us to be more pluralistically simple, so
that might not be the only way.
To stick with the implications of the book, one of the more natural implications would be to say, “Well, if we give markets more space and we limit
markets less, if what we’re saying about markets promoting morality, including pluralism, is correct, then markets will likely cultivate those and give us
spaces to cultivate those kinds of values.” I think that’s the way I would answer that kind of question.
KLUTSEY: Interesting, though, because I’m thinking that if we are to foster more pluralism, and there are people who think that the market is excessive
in certain areas and that we ought to cut back, by accommodating those views, we will have to in a way limit the market. Hence, all the values and the
morals that you’re talking about might be limited in some way. By fostering pluralism, we, in turn, might get less pluralism—that is, if part of pluralism
means that we recalibrate and reduce how much of the market system we see in our lives.
STORR: Yeah. To put it in a sound bite, there are not just economic but moral consequences to restricting markets. We might decide that we want to
pay those consequences, but we should be mindful of them as we go about thinking about doing that. We can leave for another time, another debate,
whether or not pluralism in any way is consistent with limiting markets, if by markets what we mean is individuals making choices about how they
interact with one another.
Why Study Markets?
KLUTSEY: Switching gears a little bit, what motivated you to study markets? What is it about your background or interests that got you into seeking to
understand more about markets and how they are formulated?
STORR: There are two reasons, and they pushed at it from opposite directions. I won’t say the first, but the first one I’ll talk about—that I’m an
economist by training, and I became an economist because I wanted to essentially understand why some people were poor. That was my motivation for
becoming an economist. Then you take economics, and one of the things that you quickly discover is that the economics in the textbook and the way
that economics talks about markets, they describe a market that doesn’t seem to exist, that’s unrecognizable to anybody who’s actually experienced
markets.
They describe this cold, sterile, efficient space populated by hyperrational beings who are concerned only with maximizing utility, something like that.
You look at that and you go, “I don’t know who these people are, and I don’t know what this space is.” One of the things that has led me to spend a lot of
my career looking at markets is because I wanted to spend time trying to understand how it is that individuals actually experience markets, as opposed
to this cold feature, discussion and model of a market that you see in economics.
That was one reason that made me interested in markets. The other reason is that there was this real disconnect between . . . How should I put this?
When I was younger, I thought of markets as these amazing spaces where buying and selling took place and you could get what you wanted. That was
awesome and that was cool, and I liked that about markets.
Then I went through this period where I read a lot of Marx and I was enamored with Marx, and he obviously had a really negative view of markets.
Then I spent some time looking at critiques of Marxism and became convinced that his solution to the problem wasn’t viable. That created for me an
intellectual dilemma, which is that it made it essential for me to try to understand how markets actually worked—if it was the kind of early view of
markets as spaces where we get what we want, we get money at least, or the kind of Marxist view that markets are these spaces that are alienating and
exploitative. Is that the true market? Or is the market something else? So that was the second reason that the market has become a central focus of my
work.
KLUTSEY: So it came as a result of curiosity?
STORR: Yeah.
The Culture of Markets
KLUTSEY: Wonderful. You’ve done a lot of work on culture as well. I was wondering whether you’d like to reflect a little bit on the culture of markets,
beyond what we’ve talked about.
STORR: I mentioned the more narrow reason that when economists do talk about the market, they talk about a market that’s unrecognizable. But one
of the things that struck me as being true, particularly as somebody who moved from the Bahamas and started working in the United States, is how
different markets are in different parts of the world. That difference to me often had less to do with there being different rules around the markets or
different institutional structures governing the markets. Private property rules, all those kinds of features that are critical for markets exist in a lot of
places in the world in more or less perfect ways.
Nonetheless, markets look very different. They have different sounds and colors. The people in those markets seem to be viewing different kinds of
activities as being successful or speaking to their success, because as an entrepreneur, different kinds of practices as being legitimate or illegitimate, or
different kinds of interactions as being important or unimportant, or different kinds of ceremonies around market interactions as being critical or not
critical.
Those differences were striking to me, and, again, particularly as somebody who grew up in one place and then moved to another, those were very
striking. I wanted to understand that difference and to make sense of that difference. I ended up in that work spending a lot of time with the work of
Max Weber, who wrote what I think is both—it’s a flawed book about the culture of markets, but I think it’s also an important book about the culture of
markets. It’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
He makes in there a particular observation that I think is critically important. It’s that there
are a variety of—he calls it
“capitalisms”—but, essentially, there are a variety of markets, and each market is animated by a particular
spirit or set of spirits. There’s a particular kind of ethos or value system or culture that
colors the different markets that we observe. My interest was motivated by that sort of experience, and then the approach
that I’ve taken to looking at it has been very Weberian in that way. So, how do you look, how do you discover, how do you find the economic spirits that
are actually animating economic life in particular places?
KLUTSEY: How do we distinguish between the right kind of culture around markets—I don’t know if right and wrong are the right terms to use, but the
market culture that fosters prosperity—how do we distinguish those things if we’re studying the culture of markets across the board?
STORR: I’m actually very resistant and critical of talking in terms of the right culture or wrong
culture. A lot of economists who talk about the relationship between culture and economy do speak in those kinds of terms. They talk as if
there’s certain kinds of cultural tools that are useful for market life and there’s certain kinds that are not
useful for market life or whatever, or there’s good and bad cultures. One economist actually describes cultures as being progress-
prone or progress-resistant.
I don’t agree with that. The reason I don’t agree with that way of thinking is because I don’t think of culture as a tool. Culture doesn’t have this feature
as a toolkit. It’s not this thing that we carry with us, and then when we need a particular cultural trait or something like that, we pull it out and use it,
and the thing we pull out might be good or bad for the task at hand. That’s not the way culture works. That’s not the way that—it’s somebody you know
well belonged to a certain culture, or he’s been enculturated into a certain culture. That’s not how it travels with us. It’s essentially ways that we see the
world and ways that we make sense of the world.
In that vein, I don’t think it makes sense to talk about progress-prone and progress-resistant cultures. I think all cultures have aspects of them, I guess,
that one might say seem to be progress-resistant and aspects that seem to promote creativity, innovation and whatever. I think all cultures have that
capacity because all human beings have those capacities. What that looks like in particular places, though, is going to differ based on the cultures in
those different places.
What culture speaks to isn’t the capacity of peoples being able to develop or not develop. What culture speaks to is the way, in some sense, development
is going to look and the way they are going to think about that process and the way that they’re going to pursue that process and what have you. It’s less
about what a culture can and can’t do. It’s much more about the way that people in a particular culture are going to approach that same thing versus the
way people in another culture might approach that same thing, and trying to understand where that comes from.
KLUTSEY: We can analyze different cultures, but the thing that we ought not do is to compare them—good versus bad, that kind of thing.
STORR: Well, comparing them is fine. It’s
scoring them that’s the problem. We shouldn’t try to total up the
pro-market or the pro-democracy or the pro-whatever aspects of a culture, and total up
the negative-market or negative-democracy or negative-whatever aspects of a culture, and then say, “This
culture’s good,” or “This culture’s bad.” That doesn’t say you can’t compare,
but it says you shouldn’t treat cultural analysis as if you’re checking boxes.
 Impact---AT: Inequality
The alt is net worse for increasing living conditions BUT capitalism solves
Walker-Werth 22(Angelica Walker-Werth is an Ayn Rand Fellow with FEE’s Hazlitt Project and a
recent graduate of Clemson University. She is an assistant editor and writer at The Objective Standard
and a fellow and research associate at Objective Standard Institute. Her hobbies include gardening and
travel, "How Socialism Discourages Work and Creates Poverty ," 3-30-2022, https://fee.org/articles/how-
socialism-discourages-work-and-creates-poverty/)//BRownRice
Advocacy for “socialism,” which the Socialist Party USA defines as a “social and economic order in which workers and consumers control
production,” has made a comeback in American politics in recent years. Public figures such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sing
its praises. But the truth is that socialism deeply undermines people’s ability (and motivation) to
improve their own living conditions. The misery socialism has caused for millions of people
refutes its promises—horrifically.
Socialism, advocates claim, will bring prosperity and better living conditions for everyone , a claim
also made for communism, in which the government controls the means of production and the distribution of the results. British philosopher Bertrand
Russell wrote that socialism is “calculated
to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all
except a tiny minority of the human race.” As have its advocates throughout history, the now-defunct Socialist Labor Party of
America depicted socialism as utopian, writing: “Under socialism our farmlands would yield an
abundance without great toil; the factories, mines and mills would be the safest, the most
modern, the most efficient possible and productive beyond our wildest dreams—and without
laborious work.” The website doesn’t specify how such magic would occur.
The website further insists that socialism would improve virtually every aspect of life , stating: “Our natural
resources would be intelligently conserved. Our schools would have the finest facilities and they would be devoted to developing complete human
beings, not wages [sic] slaves who are trained to hire themselves out for someone else’s profit. Our hospitals and social services would create and
maintain the finest health and recreational facilities.”
But socialist policies, when enacted, have catastrophic effects on the lives of the people living under
them. To enforce such policies, governments must take control of people’s property—whether by fully
nationalizing businesses, mandating what and how much a company must produce, or seizing
and distributing their products—thereby violating people’s right to the product of their own
effort. The victims include entrepreneurs who have built or purchased businesses, landlords who
maintain and manage properties, and everyone who earns a wage, from construction
workers to artists.
By violating these rights, socialism diminishes people’s incentive to work to improve their
circumstances by controlling or taking away the results of their effort. However hard you work,
whatever you achieve, whatever value you create—it won’t be reflected in your earnings.
The novelist Ayn Rand dramatized the effects of such a doctrine in her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. In the novel, a small town factory enacted Marx’s
slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” as policy, so that each person’s pay depended on what managers considered
as their level of need compared to their colleagues’. They did this based on such factors as the number of children the employees supported, family
members’ illnesses, and so on. People began to spend more time sharing their woes with the management than working, and many of the best
employees left the company entirely. Within four years, the factory closed. One character explained the hopelessness the policy created: “What was it
we were supposed to want to work for? For the love of our brothers? What brothers? For the bums, the loafers, the moochers we saw all around us? And
whether they were cheating or plain incompetent, whether they were unwilling or unable—what difference did that make to us? If we were tied for life
to the level of their unfitness, faked or real, how long could we care to go on?”
He explained that the company had once been a thriving one that people were proud to work for, but now hard times were the status quo: “We were
beasts of burden struggling blindly in some sort of place that was half-hospital, half-stockyards—a place geared to nothing but disability, disaster,
disease—beasts put there for the relief of whatever whoever chose to say was whichever’s need.”
This story, although fictional, points to an important fact about human nature: If
people can’t change their situation,
they won’t try to. Knowing the outcome in advance, they will feel no motivation to make
Herculean efforts for miniscule or nonexistent rewards. As economist Ludwig Von Mises put it:
To make a man act, uneasiness and the image of a more satisfactory state alone are not sufficient. A third condition is required: the expectation that
purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness. In the absence of this condition no action is feasible. Man must
yield to the inevitable. He must submit to destiny. [emphasis added]
Socialist policies severely restrict individuals’ ability to improve their conditions, so
productivity suffers and living conditions plummet. Historical examples of socialism, as
well as modern-day Venezuela and North Korea, show the misery that results.
In Soviet Russia, the government attempted to distribute the results of sixty years of steady GDP growth equally by seizing personal fortunes and
dictating wages. But buying power for the average person dropped sharply, and whether a person could actually spend his or her wages was largely
dependent on knowing the right people. Economist Mark Harrison explains: “The distribution of consumer goods and services was characterized by
shortage and privilege. Every Soviet adult could count on an income, but income did not decide access to goods and services – that depended on
political and social status.”
People who lived under the Soviet regime and now live in modern Russia appreciate that they have more opportunities to improve their lives than they
used to. Back in 2007, interviewers asked Russians about their memories and opinions of life under the Soviet regime; many of them recalled that the
USSR had “fewer possibilities.” One respondent explained, “Now there are so many chances. You can earn enough money even to buy an apartment.
Certainly it is very, very difficult, but possible.” Another participant elaborated, “Now I can earn money and there are many ways of doing so. . . . In the
Soviet Union, engineers and other technical employees of middle and high rank did not have [a] right to a second job. People who had the time and
energy and wanted to provide more for their families could not do it.”
In other words, people were willing to work extremely hard to improve their conditions—but weren’t
allowed to.
In Venezuela, socialism has driven a once-prosperous country into the ground. University professors juggle multiple jobs to keep food on the table.
Others try to escape a desperate situation; more than six million have fled in recent years, and in 2017 the suicide rate was nearly double the global
average. Venezuelans are willing to work to improve their circumstances—but the socialist regime’s oppression and economic destruction consistently
frustrate their efforts.
North Korea was conceived as a communist nation following the Second World War, but formally switched to a form of “self-reliant” socialism
following the Korean War. The leadership of the Worker’s Party of Korea has brought widespread misery in the form of horrific rights violations,
including torture, severe censorship, forced labor, and arbitrary detention. Their policies have also led to nearly half the country suffering from
inconsistent access to food and water—in stark contrast to their far more capitalist neighbor, South Korea, which has flourished in recent decades.
Advocates of socialism protest that historical examples of socialism were not “true socialism” or
“the right kind of socialism.” But it is socialism—people giving government control of producing
things—that undermines people's ability and willingness to produce and provide for
themselves in all these examples.
With free markets, by contrast, people are free to own private property and run businesses
without the government dictating production or distribution. People are rewarded for their
hard work and ability. By innovating, excelling at work, and creating more and better products or services, they can make
more money, which they can use to pay for better living quarters, education, electronics, travel,
or other life-improving goods or services produced by others. Hence, in mostly free and
capitalistic countries, such as the US, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Hong Kong, people have enjoyed massive
economic growth, which has corresponded with a major increase in average living
standards.
When human beings struggle, create, and innovate, but their efforts do not improve their own
circumstances, they burn out or give up. Marx, Russell, Sanders, and other proponents of socialism and
communism claim that their preferred systems are “for the people”—but the truth is that they
work against the nature and needs of human beings.
Alt
 Alt---Alt Fails/Framework---2AC
They should be responsible for defending the consequences of the alt’s material
implementation—current economic models are too entrenched to critique away
without a feasible blueprint for change.
Russi and Haskell, 15—Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Azim Premji University AND Assistant
Professor, Mississippi College School of Law (Luigi and John, “Heterodox Challenges to Consumption-
Oriented Models of Legislation,” Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left, 9:13, 2015, dml)
The difficulty of following these critiques from American Legal Realists and these other heterodox authors to any normative
conclusion, however, seems two-fold. On the one hand, to think outside of consumption seems in some ways to
border on a theological aspiration, to be ushered into the responsibility of remaking society
according to some almost other-worldly dimensions: an economic order that conceives
progress beyond growth, a socio-political structure that allows for systemic change without
reducing the possibilities of human freedom, the normative agenda to substantiate egalitarian
relationships, a global order that preserves the victories of industrial capitalism while
simultaneously transcending its costs (ecological, human, etc.). On the other hand, critiques of
consumption-led governance seem both anachronistic and violent. They are anachronistic
because they either too readily rely on the possibilities of the Enlightenment assumption that
there is a clear set of ‘truths’ that once disseminated to the population will enact meaningful
change (e.g., if particular industries or products are demonstrated to be unsustainable to the
environment, populations will demand alternatives) or they overly invest in the possibility of
some benevolent, universalizing spirit that is capable of trumping the politico-economic
exigencies of personal well-being (e.g., individuals are naturally willing to collectively do the
right thing for the greatest amount of people even at personal cost in a consistent manner). They
are violent because in calling for systemic change, such reversals would almost undoubtedly
entail significant and most likely intensely hostile opposition from entrenched actors who
benefit from the current economic legal arrangements. A liberal mode of economic management
(e.g., consumerism) is itself undoubtedly more coercive and violent than its advocates tend to
admit (e.g., it is part of the very problems it claims to address), but where the fundamental point of
disagreement arises is over the question whether the current trajectory is occasioning a level of lost
opportunity costs that warrant the effort and violence most likely necessary to enact an
alternative mode of political life. Furthermore, if we accept the proposition of the necessity of
coercive change, it still begs the question to what extent its proponents within intellectual
circles are really willing to fully participate and accept the potential costs of radical struggle – they
may, to put it vulgarly, simply have too much comfort to lose. To what extent, in short, are current left-oriented
calls within academia and policy circles merely reflecting the more general postmodern crisis of identity versus the partisan militant
residing at any revolutionary core? In giving normative bite to any alternative model, as the American Legal
Realist Robert Hale pointed out, it seems undoubtedly the case that any
future system would only find new
constraints and forms of violence to sustain its cohesiveness.
[T]he systems advocated by professed upholders of laissez-faire are in reality permeated with coercive restrictions of individual
freedom, and with restrictions, moreover, out of conformity with any formula of “equal opportunity” or of “preserving the equal
rights of others.” Some sort of coercive restriction of individuals, it is believed, is absolutely
unavoidable, and cannot be made to conform to any Spenserian formula.161
If fundamental reform to consumer-centric governance is inherently violent – in that it will
necessarily create only new winners and losers, and not without potentially violent
conflict and disruption – the challenge is therefore not just a question of ethics or political
will (e.g., the current distribution of resources is unjust/violent), but the feasibility of re-conceptualizing efficiency, both
in terms of strategy and tactics: in other words, upon what standard might we measure progress (or stated differently,
what are the lost opportunity costs of continuing on the current trajectory versus an
alternative economic model), and how might this be actually accomplished.162 To set out on such
a task is exactly the stakes of future progressive scholarship, and upon which we wish to close our study with a brief reflection.
 Alt---Cap Inevitable---2AC
There’s no feasibly solvent alternative to capitalism.
Beardsworth, 10—Head of the School of Politics and International Studies and Professor of
International Politics at the University of Leeds (Richard, “Technology and Politics: A Response to
Bernard Stiegler,” Cultural Politics (2010) 6 (2): 181–199, dml)
Now, for Stiegler, the question of technics is a Greek question because the relation between the human and the technical is explicitly
posed by the Greeks, and any thinking on technology necessarily works within this Greek framework.5 Whatever one makes of this
thesis technologically speaking, the question of the modern and contemporary autonomy of the economic from the social whole is
nevertheless not Greek. With the end of the Cold War, with increasing trans-border activity of capital, goods,
and, to a much lesser extent, labor, capital comes to determine the terms in which the allocation of
scarce resources is made. Capital becomes, that is, general, and there is for the foreseeable future no
alternative to it.6 All human beings live within the system of capital, whatever the particular
node they live on, or conjunction they make with it. This system is highly unstable and dissymmetrical with
immense imbalances in equality, natural resource distribution, financial assets, and terms of trade. With no alternative to
capital, a revolutionary politics is no longer tenable. The ethical question driving political innovation has,
consequently, to be worked out in terms of universally coordinated, but locally determined equilibriums between growth,
sustainability, and equity. Given economic interdependence and the necessity of large transfers of technology and wealth from the
developed world to the developing world in the context of climate change, effective financial regulation,
economic coordination, and staggered development present the right strategies to tame
the excesses of neoliberal global capitalism. Whether these strategies are feasible or not is at present an open
question given recent government failure to regulate risk-taking and the evident dilemma, for developing countries, between the
need for curtailed energy use, on the one hand, and industrialization and exit from poverty, on the other.
Now, whatever our answers to these large questions, the political question today—‘who are we?’—can only be appraised if the
political economy of a globalized world becomes the direct object of critical attention. Only by foregrounding this object and its
dilemmas will one have any chance of critical purchase on the political challenges ahead. In this context, Stiegler's
foregrounding of technology to promote a new critique of political economy is decisive in purpose and tone, important
in detail, but misplaced in general intent. Stiegler is right to stress again the pertinence of the economy for critical thought
after “the supposed economism of Marxism” (2009: 29). His technologically trained focus on the alienated consumer is important
within the cognitive dimension of contemporary capitalism and debt-led growth. But, if he is concerned to show, as a philosopher,
the general lines of a re-invented critical political economy, his object and attention need to be much larger than
his “Greek” framework affords. Since there is no systemic alternative to capitalism at this moment in history, the question of
political economy is one of whether effective regulation of capitalism is possible or not for the
world as a whole.
In this regard, I fear that Stiegler's rhetorical logic of excess testifies to a straightforward shift of Marxist terminology (from
producer to consumer) rather than a reinvention of Marxism's object (political economy). I say this despite the deep interest in
understanding cognitive capitalism and consumerism through Stiegler's categories. To take a few examples
from only the last pages of Pour une nouvelle critique de l'économie politique: we are witnessing the “extreme disenchantment of the
world” (2009: 88), a “generalized proletariat [of consumption]” (89), the “disappearance of the middle classes” (89), the
“destruction” of social association (87), and “lawless and faithless” elites of capitalism (88). This logic of excess ignores the
need today to make small distinctions, under the canopy of political regulation, within the
world as a whole. The art of politics today is the prudential art of making critical
distinctions within an economy of the same. “Critical philosophy” may wish to eschew such
distinctions, but it does so at its practical peril when there is no alternative to capitalism, and when, just as
importantly, the mid-term horizon is global coordination of a world economy under circumstances of economic
imbalance, energy-crisis, and poverty.
The political questions today are therefore: “what kind of regulation of capitalism is
ethically and empirically appropriate?”; “at what level is it appropriate?”; and “what
instance should and can decide?”. These are vast and difficult questions for philosophy, political science, and
economics: they will occupy minds and bodies for a long time to come. It is my belief that, within these questions and
their distinctions, an engaged philosophy (which Stiegler rightly advocates) has an important role to play. A generalized
technological reading of Marx creates in this context important cultural work; but it does not give itself the terms of a
contemporary critique of political economy.
I end this section with one example of what kinds of matter need to be “adopted,” and how. There has been much talk recently of the
regulation of financial offshore centers. Such talk, when coming from elite bodies in power, can serve as a smoke-
screen to evade the major issue of imbalances within the world economy as a whole (particularly the northwestern problem of
public and private debt). Worldwide coordinated investment in the real economy remains in this context an outstanding question.
That said, the political regulation of these tax havens forms part of the ongoing struggle against
international and national neoliberal practices, since it was financial offshore centers, starting with the Eurodollar markets, which
helped promote capital mobility at the end of the 1970s.7 It is this capital mobility that ended the “social democratic contract”
between capital and labor at the level of the nation-state and in the framework of the Bretton Woods international system of fixed
exchange rates. It consequently paved the way for “disembedded” global capitalism, widespread debt-led growth, and, under
worldwide conditions of financial contagion, massive social disorientation.8 The financial and economic crises of 2007–
09 resulted from “de-regulation” of domestic and global assets (from mortgages to complex financial tools like swaps and
derivatives). This de-regulation enabled financial capital accumulation from the 1970s onwards. It is now generally accepted that 60
percent of profits in the corporate sector have been finance-based in the last ten years (Brenner 2006: 293). To regulate offshore
accounts in this context is therefore ideologically and structurally crucial for the political “adoption” of
contemporary capitalism. For, owners of these accounts have fed the recent spiral of risk-taking (a half of global capital is estimated
to lie in such accounts!), but they have continued to refuse the social costs of (their) national public life. The object of
concern for critical political economy is consequently less the credit-card-consumer (and profits based
on the capitalization of his or her external memory supports) than effective regulation of their economic
causes.
That said, how, in today's world economy, can one regulate these capital accounts? This is the urgent
political question. To stop the businesses of nations moving large amounts of their capital offshore to avoid domestic
taxation suggests either the necessity of global taxation or renewed domestic regulation of capital outflow (as in the 1960s and 1970s
in “embedded” liberal states). The political cosmopolitan response—global regulations of all international capital flows—is certainly
the best response theoretically since capital competition thrives on exceptions to legal norms. It is however institutionally
impractical given the weak status of international rule. Nation-state fiscal policy is practical since it can block capital displacement to
more competitive national markets. National monetary policy requires, however, clear leadership, democratic example, and effective
bureaucratic surveillance (and in the case of the EU it is already not possible given the monetary sovereignty of the European Central
Bank). And so forth. My point is this.
These kinds of dilemmas immediately face any progressive thinking of political economy today: they
require careful ethical and empirical exposition before one can make general
critical claims. The regulation of financial offshore centers is actually one of the more simple problems of global cooperation
to solve, although its structural effects will be deep concerning finance-led growth. How much more conceptual and
empirical thinking is needed to work out market and government motivation for effective
climate change mitigation; or to work out long-term the global imbalance between Chinese
savings and US debt … Regarding these political dilemmas concerning effective regulation of global capital
flows, I remain unconvinced that Stiegler's philosophico-technical reading of the economy can (1)
properly delimit the economic problems that need to be adopted; and (2) tease out the differences of
approach required to adopt contemporary economic conditions effectively. Under the general conditions of a capitalist
world economy, however, these differences constitute the very condition of more local social re-motivation (Stiegler's very concern).
 Alt---AT: Commons
Perm do both – the affirmatives investment in sustainable technology is a form of
“integrating the social whole”
Pazaitis et al 22 - Alex Pazaitis is researcher at the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and
Governance, Tallinn University of Technology and core member of P2P Lab. He holds a PhD in
Technology Governance and is leading parts of the COSMOLOCALISM and CENTRINNO projects Alex
has extensive experience from research and innovation projects and project management, and has worked
as a consultant for private and public organizations. His research interests include digital commons;
theory of value, innovation policy; cooperativism; and distributed ledger technologies, “Towards a Theory
of Value as a Commons”, https://storage.googleapis.com/jnl-up-j-ijc-files/journals/1/articles/1153/
submission/proof/1153-1-12230-1-10-20220907.pdf) luke
The digital commons build upon these functions of the innovation commons and extend them through
commons- based arrangements. The creation of commons and relations around them articulate a value
system that transcends our understanding of innovation altogether. Operating in a value system inherently at odds
with their practices, digital commons innovations are primarily expressed as limits posed to the expansion of capital (De Angelis,
2007). Legal hacks such as copyleft or civil disobedience practices, like peer- to-peer sharing bypassing
intellectual property rules, create spheres of de-commodification to reclaim freedom expressed
through the commons. In this sense, digital commons institutional practices are similar in their underlying logic to struggles in
non-digital settings, such as occupations of land or urban spaces, while digital commons often contribute to these struggles
(Kioupkiolis, 2021). These limits to capital are aligned with the post-growth/degrowth notion of limits as necessary condition for
genuine human freedom (Kallis, 2019). They challenge the understanding of innovation as the continuous introduction of novelty in
markets to drive growth with one related to social-emancipation and prosperity within planetary boundaries (Pansera and Fressoli,
2021). Coriat (2015) uses the term “commons-based innovation” to describe the recurring cycles of open input,
self-organization, and shared output evinced in digital commons projects. These characteristics are found
in a broad spectrum of digital commons innovations expanding on many levels: from digital tools,
knowledge, and information, to design and physical artifacts, to integrated technological systems. In FOSS
cases, such as GNU/Linux, Apache, Mozilla Firefox and WordPress, self-organized communities share code and co-create software
tools openly shared under commons-based licenses. Likewise, open hardware projects, like RepRap (Jones et al., 2011) and open
design technologies like WikiHouse (Priavolou and Niaros, 2019) share technical designs and manufacturing guides that people can
utilize locally in community- operated places, such as Fab Labs and Makerspaces. Finally, cases such as the Farm Hack and L’Atelier
Paysan (Giotitsas, 2019) demonstrate how communities of farmers, engineers, researchers , and
enthusiasts operate open technological systems around small-scale farming tools and the related
services and commercial operations. Digital commoning and commons-based innovation offer a dynamic
framework of how value practices that are contested to capitalist ones articulate a broader social whole in
the digital economy. We analyze the characteristics and causal relations of this process of articulation by the digital commons
to identify elements of value that may rationalize and guide real economic phenomena towards a commons- based orderly
configuration within and beyond the digital economy. Exemplary digital commons cases feature a series of
process, organizational, and institutional innovations that materialize these elements, and make
them visible as they define commons-based orderly configurations in the emerging digital economy. With capitalism
gradually crystalizing its institutions that define the conditions for accumulation and profitability in this
emerging field, the digital commons become the epicenter of new forms of enclosures. Commons-based
innovation demonstrates how alternative value practices can unfold within the capitalist value
system that is fundamentally at odds with them. This dynamic framework of value informs our
exploration of elements of value as a commons.
 Alt---AT: Degrowth
Degrowth fails — it’s too vague and has internal contradictions
Schwartzman 12 David Schwartzman (Schwartzman’s first public role was as a national youth
organizer for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Schwartzman received his BA from
McGill University, Canada in 1945, and spent the 1945–1946 academic year studying under Milton
Friedman and George Stigler at the University of Minnesota. He earned his PhD from UC Berkeley, USA
in 1953. He held many teaching positions in economics: Lecturer at McGill (1948–1951); Instructor at
Columbia (1954–1958); Assistant Professor at New York University (1958–1960), and Professor at the
New School for Social Research (1960–1964), where he attained emeritus status in 2002.), 2-10-2012, "A
Critique of Degrowth and its Politics," Taylor & Francis, https://www-tandfonline-
com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2011.648848?src=recsys
The degrowth program is highly problematic because of its failure to analyze the qualitative aspects of
economic growth and its emphasis on the local economy without recognizing the urgency to address
global anthropogenic change from a transnational political perspective . In particular, a major challenge humanity
now faces is to rapidly implement a prevention program to avoid catastrophic climate change. Demilitarization,
solarization, and the creation of agroecologies are critical if we are to have any chance of
success. This demands struggle on all spatial scales, from the neighborhood to the globe. While degrowth proponent Mauro
Bonaiuti (Citation2012; this issue) provides an interesting discussion of the social limits of economic growth
driven by capital reproduction, I find the paper's degrowth argument shallow and frankly incapable of
providing a viable political agenda for confronting the converging economic and ecological crises of real
existing fossil fuel nuclear capitalism in the face of the growing threat of catastrophic climate change
(“C3”). Specifically, it fails to come to terms with qualitative versus quantitative aspects of economic growth
and the critical difference between using the current energy supplies and a solarized infrastructure. The concept of economic growth
should be deconstructed, with in-depth consideration of its qualitative versus quantitative aspects, particularly its differential
ecological and health impacts. Growth of what are we speaking? Weapons of mass destruction, unnecessary
commodities, SUVs versus bicycles, culture, information, pollution, pornography, or simply more hot air?
What growth is sustainable in the context of biodiversity preservation and human health,
and which is not? Bonaiuti fails to confront these questions and instead lumps all growth into a
homogenous outcome of the physical and political economy. Most of Bonaiuti's paper is occupied with an
examination of the social limits of economic growth. However, it fails to account for the highly contradictory character
of corporate-driven globalization. For example, now for the first time in history, a majority of humanity lives in
urban areas. Population density in the global South has grown alongside great inequalities (Davis Citation2006). On the other
hand, a vast new terrain of class struggle has emerged centered on the potentials of green urbanism in the
context of the growing threat of C3 (Davis Citation2010). Davis’ argument for a green (and red) approach to urban
reconstruction is very welcome. Even now cities like New York are much more energy efficient than suburbia.
And in China, now the greatest carbon emitter on the planet (not per capita, of course), almost half its
population is urban (46 percent), with urbanization rapidly increasing . Davis points out that very significant
reductions in carbon emissions could potentially occur with aggressive energy conversion
in buildings and transportation centered in and around urban areas . So the urban question as a
nexus of class struggle is now also a climate security challenge. This huge challenge is also a huge opportunity to create that other
world that is possible—a green and red utopia—especially in metropolitan areas. Undoubtedly, this is a vision that will attract many
more adherents than the “end of growth, we must all sacrifice” mantra of so many neo-Malthusian greens. Clean air and clean water,
meaningful employment, and more free creative time for all on this planet should be the transnational red and green program. One
more example of degrowth's limited vision should suffice: economic growth created globalized information technology with its
immense potential for a transnational movement, a development made possible by this revolution in communication.
 Alt---AT: Dual Power
Dual power strategies fail, don’t spill up, and disavow essential elements of
resistance.
Lütticken, 21—teaches art history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Sven, “Divergent States of
Emergence: Remarks on Potential Possibilities, Against All Odds,” e-flux #115, February 2021, dml)
This situation complicates progressive notions of dual power. In Murray Bookchin’s definition, dual
power is “a strategy for creating precisely those libertarian institutions of directly democratic
assemblies that would oppose and replace the State. It intends to create a situation in which
the two powers—the municipal confederations and the nation-state—cannot coexist, and
one must sooner or later displace the other.” Here, then, the state is the power to be opposed and ultimately
replaced; however, the second step has proven a rather big hurdle—and at the moment, under
the right-wing onslaught, it is often a matter of defending the state’s institutions even
while building up popular, assemblist power.
Dual power is often discussed with reference to Rojava or Chiapas, the Zone à Défendre near
Nantes in France, and various temporary autonomous zones that emerge from urban confrontations.
Emancipatory “liberated zones” carved out of the territory of the globalist empire are attempts to build up bases within the
heartlands of empire. In the wake of May ’68, movements such as the Dutch Kabouters and the German Spontis attempted to
create counterpower from below by creating forms of self-organization and self-
government. Their spectacular and mediatized exploits—the Kabouters’ declaration of Amsterdam as an
“Orange Free State,” as in “free from the House of Orange,” or the Spontis’ squatting and urban warfare in Frankfurt— proved
predictably short-lived under the conditions of actually existing capitalism, but for decades
autonomists have been creating pockets and zones of opacity. Such desertions, however, should not be
fetishized and identified with counterpower as such. They have their necessary
counterpoint in activist uses of the infrastructure of the state and of the legal forms that
structure relations in the decomposing states of capitalism.
Even while Agamben is busy discrediting himself, there may be residual use-value in (a critical reading of) his writings on destituent
power and inoperativity—specifically, in his insistence on opening existing forms of work and activity to “a new possible use.” In
other words, it is not so much about a creatio ex nihilo as it is about adaptation, modification, through habits. An example is a feast,
where eating is not primarily about feeding oneself, and where dance liberates the body from “utilitarian movements,” instead
unfolding “gestures in their pure inoperativity.” Building on but going beyond the concept of “destituent power” as
developed by the Argentinian autonomist left, where it referred to inchoate and disruptive popular power preceding the constituent
moment, Agamben refuses to posit a linear sequence of destituting–constituting–constituted power. He advocates a habitual use of
the power to not-be or not-do, against the sovereign ban and its instrumentalism: a new “ontology of potentiality” needs to replace
“the ontology founded on the primacy of actuality,” and this means exploring forms of destituent power that resist being captured
and constituted. This points beyond Agamben’s own rather abstract calls for a “renunciation of the
law” as “a form and a way of life,” and to an immanent desertion that uses the rights-form against the
state of exception.
These may be the master’s tools (the tools of sovereignty), but rather than thinking of
renunciation as a single dramatic gesture, it should be reconceptualized in terms of long
and patient work with the legal form—including the forms of cultural and political
institutions, such as parties and parliament. Forms have affordances and limitations. A decentralized
network to which David Graeber belonged found out that it was legally impossible for them to collectively own a car. However,
depending on national legal frameworks, forms such as cooperatives may provide means for an immanent
opting-out. Fernando Garcia-Dory’s INLAND cooperative would be one example that is of particular interest for the connections—
the smooth space—it establishes between the metropolis and the agricultural Hinterland. Meanwhile, official trials are offset by
activist tribunals that use legal protocols against the state, and groups of refugees and “illegals” who are only
physically (grosstopically) in the same space as Western cultural workers, but not legally, use cultural spaces to break through into
visibility.
The renunciation of the law thus leads to deeper immersion that may be a higher form of
desertion. In practical terms, this ranges from work with refugees to challenging the organizational structure
and modus operandi of museums, from creating cooperatives to joining unions to creating parties, and
indeed to carving out spaces between and against known legal forms. At stake is indeed “the
care of the possible.” Emergence may take on unspectacular forms, barely perceptible—a slight
shift, an undercommoning of institutional structures, an unforeseen use, a covert
abuse of dominant forms.
 Alt---AT: Ecosocialism
Ecosocialism is the most unrealistic solution to ever exist — collaboration with
industrial systems is essential to our survival
Huber 19 Matt Huber, 2019, "Ecosocialism: Dystopian and Scientific," Socialist Forum,
https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/winter-2019/ecosocialism-dystopian-and-scientific/
Climate change is bleak – coastal sea level rise, millions of climate refugees and whole sections of the planet too hot for human life.
Thus, for good reason, ecosocialist politics often emphasizes a “dystopian” vision of a future if capitalism is not replaced. The main
mode of critique is laying out what the science is telling us about current ecological collapse and the projected worsening of
planetary conditions (not just climate but mass extinction, nitrogen dead zones etc.). However, part of socialist strategy is also about
convincing the mass of workers that a better future is possible. Ecosocialist politics usually projects a dystopian future we must
avoid, rather than an emancipatory future worth fighting for. Recently my local socialist reading group happened to be reading
Friedrich Engels’s classic Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. For Engels, a “scientific” socialism must be grounded in an analysis of
what kind of socialist society is possible given historical and material conditions. Engels emphasized utopian socialists imagine an
ideal society “invented out of one’s brain”, but failed to articulate how socialism could be realistically built out of the present. I make
a similar claim in this essay. The dystopian vision of the future among much of the green left prevents it from explaining how
socialism can be built out of the material conditions that confront us. Ecosocialists often make impressive use of natural science to
project a dystopian future, but this is not the “science” Engels called for (his “science” is better described as historical materialism).
Our dystopian future is seen as a product of industrial civilization. For many ecosocialists or left green thinkers, the
science is so dire the only option is a wholesale rejection of industrialism This, I would argue, leads to
some fanciful (even utopian) ideas of what comes next. Degrowth theorists imagine a “decentralized”
future society, “where resources were managed by bio-region—a participatory, low-tech, low-consumption
economy, where everyone has to do some farming…” Richard Smith argues for a socialist program of
“managed deindustrialization” without fully explaining what that would actually mean. Last year in the New
Left Review, Troy Vettese argued for austerity (or what he called “egalitarian eco-austerity”): the program includes energy rationing,
compulsory veganism and turning over half the planet to wild nature (a proposal he takes from reactionary sociobiologist, E.O.
Wilson). Much of this thought recoils at any hint of industrial technology (or what they pejoratively call a
“techno-fix”) or “eco-modernism.” There is a core contradiction here: Marx, Engels, and all the classical
socialists saw industrialization as providing a historically new material capacity for abundance that could
abolish poverty and offer freedom from work. As Engels himself made clear: ….[I]t is precisely this industrial revolution
which has raised the productive power of human labour to such a high level that – for the first time in the history of humanity – the
possibility exists…to produce not only enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society and for an abundant reserve
fund, but also to leave each individual sufficient leisure so that what is really worth preserving in historically inherited culture –
science, art, human relations is not only preserved, but converted from a monopoly of the ruling class into the common property of
the whole of society…. Simply put, industrial capitalism makes emancipation and freedom possible for all of
society. This vision of freedom through social control over industrial abundance is key to mobilizing the
masses to the socialist fight. Yet, most ecosocialists agree it is this very system of industrialization that has
taken the planet to the brink. This has led to a wedge between the “fully automated luxury communists”
on one side and the degrowth-oriented ecosocialists on the other with very little in between. The core
question: is a politics of rejecting industrialism realistic given material conditions? Is it scientific in Engels’s sense? I will argue that
this anti-industrial vision of ecosocialism is “unscientific”: its vision of the future is based in a romantic rejection of the material
conditions that confront us. Clearly, ecosocialism will need to grapple with an ecologically sound vision of
emancipation, but a scientific approach will show how the history of industrialization offers us only a
limited set of possible (positive) futures. Here I argue that an emancipatory future can only be built
out of industrial systems– not against them. As Leigh Phillips puts it, “Let’s take over the machine, not turn it
off!” In order to understand this from a “scientific” (and ecological) perspective, we need to consider the historically specific
relations between industrialization and what Marx called “the realm of freedom.” Socialism, Machinery, and the Realm of Freedom
My core thesis is that Engels’s view of scientific socialism is simply a realistic view of what is materially possible given historical
conditions. In ecological terms, capitalism is fundamentally new because of the mass alienation of the bulk of the population from
the natural conditions of their existence – the land. For the first time the vast majority is violently torn from the direct dependence
on the land and forced to rely upon commodity relations to survive (usually but not exclusively via wage labor). Capital exploits this
landless proletariat to accumulate capital and surplus value. One of capital’s main levers of accumulation is a relentless tendency to
invest in machines that improve labor productivity. Industrial capitalism thus vastly expands society’s productive capacities in ways
that surpasses previous biological and spatial limits to growth. Marx believed the way capitalism develops automation and
machinery could massively reduce the labor needed for basic social reproduction – what he called the “realm of necessity.” If
machinery were under socialized control (and not for private profit), he argued all of society could enjoy an extended “realm of
freedom” – that is, free time not shaped by the urgency to meet society’s basic needs. Although George Orwell suggested the lack of
manual labor could create, “a paradise of little fat men,” free time need not mean idleness and could include a variety of personal
and collective activities (including artisanal production or gardening if one enjoys it). In his famous quote on the “realm of freedom”
Marx mentions the realm of necessity should include “the least expenditure of energy” so that the realm of freedom can include
“development of human energy [as an] an end in itself.” The focus on energy is key here – and one that is all too often ignored by
both dystopian ecosocialists and fully automated communists alike. By focusing on energy and labor, we get a clearer picture of the
historical conditions industrialization produced – and the possible futures we might build out of it. The Ecology of Industrialization:
Energy, Labor, and Land The climate crisis emerges out of our relation to energy: specifically the use of fossil fuels to power
machines and industrial processes. As Michael Löwy makes clear, ecosocialism, “first of all…requires a revolution in the energy
system.” Yet, we do not reflect enough on the energy system that came before industrialization. In pre-
industrial energy systems, nearly all “work” was accomplished by human and animal muscle power – a
huge proportion devoted to agriculture. Thus, social power required control over human and animal
bodies (i.e. slavery). This also meant the vast majority of society was condemned to brutal agrarian labor .
Aziz Rana explains how early white settler colonialism was marked by, ”a basic divide between free and unfree work…The nature of
agricultural life meant…there would have to be others who participated in forms of labor long perceived to be degraded.” In this
context, political power and freedom meant exclusion from this work; slavery was seen as “either a necessary evil or a legitimate
social practice.” How did the shift to industrialization change these dynamics? Industrialization largely meant the replacement of
muscle power with automatic machinery. This started with the production of textiles, but quickly spread to the mass production of
everything from housing to books formerly made by human hands and brains (today algorithms can replace human decision-
making). In the 20th Century, a narrow spectrum of the working class gained access to automated machines in the realm of social
reproduction (e.g., dishwashers, electric devices, etc). The level of reliance on energy and machinery has gotten to the point where,
according to historian Bob Johnson, per capita energy consumption in the U.S. is the equivalent to, “about eighty-nine human
bodies working for us day and night.” In the early industrial era slavery was not displaced by machinery, but rather supplemented it.
As Marx wrote: “Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no
cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry.” Yet, we often do not consider the role of fossil fuels in “freeing” some of
society from muscle-based labor on the level of society as a whole. As mechanization spread throughout all forms of production, the
social necessity of slavery slowly dissipated (even as it still persists today). In this context, social power emerged less from control
over human bodies (slaves) and more from control of machines, factories and other “means of production.” Capitalists who owned
such machines made massive investments in fixed capital, which made their labor requirements more flexible. As Andreas Malm
illustrates, fossil fuel – specifically coal-fired steam power – suited capital’s need to control energy, machines and exploitable labor
power in the service of accumulation. Unlike rural water, steam was mobile and could be concentrated in urban industrial districts
where “where labor is easily procured.” The other critical material aspect of pre-industrial energy relations is land. All pre-industrial
energy came from the land – food for muscles, fiber for clothing, and forest for fuel. In this territorially extensive system, those who
controlled land had immense social power – the church, crown, and aristocracy. Suddenly the energy requirements of production
shifted from large swathes of land to small “holes” with access to the subterranean bounties of fossil fuel. Capitalism can be seen as a
historical process of shifting power from those who controlled land (the landlord class) to capitalists who controlled energy,
machines, and, of course, money (the bourgeoisie). Like labor, we do not reflect on the enormous material
transformations this transition made possible in terms of land-use. Fossil fuels expanded society’s access
to heat energy for not only domestic heating, but also heat process industries like brickmaking, steel, glass
and beer. Prior to the widespread use of coal, E.A. Wrigley estimates iron smelting was spatially extensive:
“10,000 tons of iron involved the felling of 100,000 acres of woodland.” Rolf Sieferle estimates that by the 1820s,
British coal use would have required the entire territory of the United Kingdom to produce the equivalent amount of wood energy.
The urban built environment of steel, concrete and brick requires relatively little land for its fuel needs. It is hard to
imagine a future built environment based purely on organic land-based energy and
materials. None of this would be possible without dramatic transformations of agriculture which freed up labor for other kinds
of work. It was the steel plow and eventually the tractor that dramatically lessened the labor requirements on farms. Today, virtually
every “input” into industrialized agriculture is one that saves labor. Tractors plow and plant and chemicals do the “work” of weeding,
killing bugs, and fertilizing the soil. In the U.S., the story is dramatic: in 1790 90% of the population worked on farms (including
slaves). In 1910, it was down to 35%. Today it is less than 1.5%. As Connor Kilpatrick and Adaner Usmani put it, “In the West at least,
the agrarian question has been answered — by capitalism. “ Even the global south has also seen massive “depeasantization”,
although an estimated 1.5 billion still practice smallholder agriculture around the world. Industrialization has totally remade the
world from a biologically restricted land and muscle based economy into an automated mass energy society of abundance. Socialists
have always argued this makes possible a wider “freedom” from work, but neglect the energy basis of these relationships. Many
ecological critiques argue these machines are inherently stained with capitalist logics. Since the capitalist use of machinery has not
lightened the toil of workers, we must abandon the idea they will ever do so. Consider a Corner House report on “Energy, Work, and
Finance”: ”Every time a ‘labour-saving’ energy advance has been introduced in the workplace, the result has generally been new
kinds of toil.” As I have argued above, industrialization actually has led to less labor in agriculture. However, the authors are
generally right that under capitalism industrial abundance has not led to ample leisure for the majority. Nevertheless, this is a class
not technological problem. It is rooted in capital’s private appropriation of the wealth and profit from automatic machinery – not in
the machinery itself. The key “scientific” question for ecosocialists must be: how can we build an emancipatory and ecological society
out of industrial forms of production that now structure the material lives of billions of people? Some ecosocialists hint we should
return to more labor-intensive agricultural society. Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams suggest an ecological agriculture “…may mean
smaller farms with more people working on them,” but they admit machines must developed to lessen the time needed for working
on farms. Jasper Bernes’s provocative essay, “The Belly of the Revolution,” lays out a future vision of communism where developed
world agriculture is more “effort intensive,” and “nearly everyone would have some hand in growing the food they eat.” More
egregious is the explicit promotion of labor-intensive farming. One of the most prominent critics of industrial agriculture, Tony
Weis, claims, “Agricultural systems must be vastly more labour-intensive and biodiverse…There is no substitute for skillful and
dense human labour, decentralized agricultural knowledge and careful, passionate stewardship.” Naomi Klein explains the benefits
of sustainable agriculture: “Another bonus: this type of farming is much more labor intensive than industrial agriculture, which
means that farming can once again be a substantial source of employment.” Let’s get real, or “scientific.” At least in
the U.S., where 1.5% people work on farms (globally it is around 30%), we are not going to win the masses
of workers with a socialist program based on what Leigh Phillips calls “drudgery for all. ” Capitalism has
produced the first society where the vast majority need not work in agriculture. A reversal of this is not politically possible or
desirable. We cannot make ecosocialism about massive urban outmigration where millions must go do hard labor on farms (that
sounds reminiscent of a Stalinist collectivization based on coerced labor). Despite the popularity of urban gardens and small-scale
agriculture, we cannot wax nostalgic about “passionate” agricultural labor. Because agricultural labor is often
insufferable, societies reliably find ways to coerce others on behalf of elites. While we certainly want to
support peasant movements seeking to maintain their livelihoods and resist dispossession, we cannot act
as if smallholder agriculture is any material basis for a society beyond capitalism. Yet, one article argues
that something called “peasant food webs” have the capacity to “feed the world.” Peasant communities,
already struggling with debt and manifold threats to their livelihood must now feed a world that is more
than 50% urban? Who will force them to?
 Alt---AT: Psychoanalysis---2AC---Capitalism Inevitable
Capitalist ideologies are wired into human psyches beyond the alt’s ability to
change. You can’t just analyze your way out of the profit motive.
Fleming and Banerjee, 16—Professor of Business and Society and Director of the Modular
Executive MBA programme AND Professor of Management and Director of the Executive PhD program at
Cass Business School, City University London (Peter and Subhabrata Bobby, “When performativity fails:
Implications for Critical Management Studies,” human relations, 2016, Vol. 69(2), 257–276, dml)
In their influential analysis of Critical Management Studies (CMS), Fournier and Grey (2000) argue that CMS scholarship is
driven by three basic principles: denaturalization, reflectivity and non-performativity. Denaturalization deconstructs the seemingly
immutable ‘realities’ and ‘rationalities’ of managerialism while exposing the wealth of alternatives that reside in the shadows of
organizational life. Reflectivity challenges the dominance of positivism in the methodologies of mainstream
management research, revealing how all social scientific investigation is underpinned by political
assumptions.
Drawing on Lyotard’s (1984) notion of instrumental performativity, the
principle of nonperformativity rejects the
means-ends rationality that governs many organizational situations, especially under neoliberal capitalism
characterized by a brazen cost-minimization/ profit-maximization logic (Fournier and Grey, 2000).
The principle of non-performativity has recently been questioned in a number of articles published in this journal and elsewhere.
These authors suggest that by critically distancing themselves from the concrete activities of managers,
researchers may miss opportunities to intervene and make a difference for the better. For
example, in their influential article, Spicer et al. (2009: 538) argue that the
principle of non-performativity needlessly isolates
CMS from organizational practitioners. This in turn fosters a corrosive ‘cynicism and negativism’ whereby
scholars ply grand critical theories that have little relevance to everyday organizational
challenges. Others similarly maintain that the principle of non-performativity fails to offer ‘practical’ guidelines for
managers (King and Learmonth, 2014); misses crucial opportunities to ‘collaborate’ with middle-managers and stubbornly
objects to becoming ‘more relevant to practice’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 7); is elitist in how it ignores
practitioner management texts in favour of ‘canonical perspectives’ associated with Marx, Foucault and the Frankfurt School
(Hartmann, 2014: 619, also see Clegg et al., 2006).
These scholars recommend a renewed commitment to performativity so that critical knowledge
can have an impact on the practices of managers and lead to emancipatory change. Most assertive in this regard are
Spicer et al. (2009) and Wickert and Schaefer (2014) and their respective notions of critical performativity and progressive
performativity. Both articles draw upon wider philosophical studies of performativity to discern its potential for CMS researchers
hoping to make meaningful interventions. In particular, they apply Austin (1963) and Butler’s (1990, 1993) influential insight about
the way language creates reality (rather than just describe it). Armed with this insight, it is claimed that CMS
researchers can change organizational practice (for the better) by altering how language is used by
managers. Modified speech may lead to modified and thus emancipatory behaviour. Such
critical performativity ‘involves active and subversive intervention into managerial discourses and practices’ (Spicer et al., 2009:
538). Instead of worrying about emancipation on a grand scale, more modest microemancipatory practices might ‘stimulate the
performative effects of language in order to induce incremental, rather than radical, changes in managerial behaviour’ (Wickert and
Schaefer, 2014: 1). This means getting closer to managers rather than critiquing them from afar.
We agree that CMS scholars should be reflecting on how their critical findings might translate into
concrete change. Otherwise why bother being critical in the first place? Moreover, we
applaud recent efforts – including the advocates of critical and progressive performativity – to rethink how CMS research might
make a difference to organizational practices. Our motivation for entering this discussion, however, derives from a nagging doubt.
We are concerned that the emphasis on discursive performativity as a change mechanism risks
presenting an overly optimistic view of (a) the power of language to alter institutionalized
organizational practices associated with neoliberal capitalism and (b) the capability of CMS
scholars alone to reorder in situ how managers make sense of governing imperatives like profit-
maximization, shareholder value, consumer responsiveness and so forth. While there may
be situations in which critical and/ or progressive performativity may ‘talk into existence new
(counterbalancing) behaviours and practices’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 3), we also propose that, realistically
speaking, such attempts would just as likely fail given the preponderant pressures of
economic rationality in many business contexts. Missing in the aforementioned calls for a wider appreciation of
(discursive) performativity, therefore, are the strict boundary conditions that Austin (1963) and Butler (1990, 1993, 2010)
themselves place around the notion.
Our article contributes to the ongoing discussion about the challenge of making CMS performative by addressing two central
questions. First, rather than automatically assume their success, how might discursive performative approaches
(such as critical and progressive performativity) fail
to enact desired material changes and for what
reasons? Answering this question will provide a better understanding of the practical
contingencies that can determine whether these new performativities are the best method for
endeavouring to influence organizations. Second, in light of the constraints on the performative potential of language, what other
possible avenues are available to the CMS community for having an impact (however modest) on organizational practices and
routines?
The article is structured in four parts. First, we provide an overview of the founding CMS principle of non-performativity and analyse recent calls for critical research to become more performative, giving
particular attention to the two articles that have recently appeared in this journal. Second, we identify the circumstances under which it is more realistic to expect discursive performativity to fail rather than
succeed. Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR) is here highlighted as a failed performative in managerial and mainstream discourses. Third, the article posits alternative methods that the CMS community
might use to help make organizations less exploitative and more equitable. Fourth, we conclude by discussing the broader role of critique in management studies at this juncture. Our overall aim is to continue the
ongoing dialogue about performativity in the CMS community and hopefully inform new avenues to achieve its stated objectives in business and society.
Critical Management Studies and the question of performativity
We will not provide a detailed overview of CMS as that has been done extensively elsewhere (see e.g. Adler et al., 2007; Alvesson et al., 2009; Banerjee, 2011a; Fournier and Grey, 2000; Spicer et al., 2009). CMS is
characterized by a diversity of theoretical and philosophical perspectives. For instance, the 2013 Critical Management Studies conference held in Manchester comprised of 25 streams involving a wide range of
topics such as critical perspectives on strategy, globalization, international business, diversity, feminism, race theory, human resource management, marketing, accounting, postcolonialism, sexuality, gender,
postmodernism and environmentalism. CMS was established as a division in the Academy of Management in 2008. The domain statement of the CMS division describes its mission:
CMS serves as a forum within the Academy for the expression of views critical of established management practices and the established social order. Our premise is that structural features of contemporary society,
such as the profit imperative, patriarchy, racial inequality, and ecological irresponsibility often turn organizations into instruments of domination and exploitation. Driven by a shared desire to change this
situation, we aim in our research, teaching, and practice to develop critical interpretations of management and society and to generate radical alternatives. Our critique seeks to connect the practical shortcomings
in management and individual managers to the demands of a socially divisive and ecologically destructive system within which managers work. (CMS, 2014)
Thus, CMS challenges the fundamental normative assumption that managerial notions of efficiency are universally desirable, and that pursuing profit motives can only lead to positive outcomes for the workforce
and society. Moreover, CMS is driven by the desire (even if it does not always articulate the means) to transform existing power relations in organizations with a view to encouraging less oppressive practices that
do not harm social and environmental welfare. As Fournier and Grey (2000: 16) argue, ‘to be engaged in critical management studies means, at the most basic level, to say that something is wrong with
management, as a practice and body of knowledge, and that it should be changed’.
Along with de-naturalization and reflexivity, Fournier and Grey (2000) suggest that the principle of non-performativity is crucial to the CMS project: What exactly do Fournier and Grey (2000) mean by non-
performativity? Let us imagine a CMS researcher studying changing employment practices in the United Kingdom. S/he gains access to a subsidiary of a multinational enterprise that has started to use zero-hours
employment contracts to maximize profits for its parent company. These contracts have been widely condemned as exploitative and unjust since they insist employees always be on call but guarantee zero-hours of
paid work (see Guardian, 2013). Our non-performative orientated CMS researcher would not be interested in generating knowledge that enables the efficiency and instrumentalization of this new employment
system. Nor would s/he be overly sympathetic to the operational manager’s ‘point of view’ because employees are so obviously disadvantaged and suffering as a result. So what is our CMS scholar seeking to
achieve in undertaking this research? Generally speaking, change hopefully. But here is the nub of the problem. How can critical researchers make an effective intervention while tenaciously remaining aloof (both
ideologically and practically) of the concrete activities being described? What aspects of performativity, whether critical or progressive, can engage with this clearly exploitative practice to create a fairer outcome?
If zero-hours contracts are practices created by the language of neoliberal capitalism, what other utterances have the power and agency to counter these practices?
Towards a performative Critical Management Studies?

Recent commentators have addressed questions like these by suggesting that CMS scholars
must stop being so
negative about the idea of working with managers to help bring about practical change. In
their strident critique of Fournier and Grey (2000), Spicer et al. (2009) maintain that,
. . . a potential consequence of holding strong to the credo of anti-performativity is that CMS withdraws
from
attempts to engage with practitioners and mainstream management theorists who are at least
partially concerned with issues of performativity . . . an anti-performative CMS satisfies itself with attempts to shock the mainstream
out of its ideological slumber through intellectually ‘pissing in the street’. (Spicer et al., 2009: 542)
Critical scholars should instead become actively involved with everyday practitioners and
engage with the language they use in an attempt to construct new realities and
opportunities.
Following Spicer et al. (2009), Wickert and Schaefer (2014: 20) also implore the CMS community to have ‘greater impact on what
managers actually do’. They are concerned that critical scholars fail to provide ‘knowledge for dealing with
those aspects of managerial life that have been identified as problematic . . . and overlooks
potential points of engagement with managers’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 5). Middle-managers in particular ought to
be enlisted by CMS researchers because they are likely to be less aligned with organizational elites and potentially more sympathetic
with frustrated subordinates to trigger progressive social change. For this reason too, Hartmann (2014: 626) argues the CMS
community could also engage with managerial texts that are often dismissed in favour of critical theory, Marxism and feminism, in
an attempt to subvert mainstream approaches and shift the discourse towards more emancipatory objectives instead. At least
managerial texts provide a non-alienating ‘vocabulary to think progressively about alternatives without setting itself against the
goals of organizations (i.e. it is not directly opposed to performative ends)’.
Critical and progressive performativity
To rectify the pitfalls of non-performativity, Spicer et al. (2009) posit ‘critical performativity’ as a practical alternative
for CMS scholars. This model of impact can
be achieved through an affirmative stance (getting close to the
object of critique to reveal points of revision), an ethic of care (providing space for management’s viewpoint
and collaborating with them to achieve emancipatory ends), pragmatism (being realistic
about what can be achieved given structural constraints), engaging potentialities (leveraging points
of possibility for changing managerial practices in an incremental rather than radical ‘revolutionary’
manner) and asserting a normative orientation (ideals for ‘good’ organizational practice).
Three implications of this approach are noteworthy. First, Spicer et al. (2009) move beyond Fournier and Grey’s (2000) Lyotardian
conceptualization of performativity (i.e. input/output maximization) by drawing on other philosophical traditions that highlight how
language/speech might count as social action (see Gond and Cabantous [2015] for an extended overview of this literature in the
social sciences and philosophy). Austin (1963) and Butler’s (1990, 1993) notion of performative utterances (i.e. words that are also
deeds) is considered especially important in this regard. Rather than functioning only as a secondary descriptor, language can also
perform reality, as when a judge utters ‘I sentence you to . . .’ CMS researchers might thus create equitable organizational practices
by intervening in management discourse and experimenting ‘with metaphors that might be floating around in the organization’
(Spicer et al., 2009: 547). Second, an ethic of affirmation and care implies that CMS ought to listen to management’s side of the story
and engage in a ‘loving struggle’ (p. 548) with their language rather than simply criticize: ‘CMS needs to appreciate the contexts and
constraints of management . . . from this follows some degree of respect and care’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 545). Third, CMS must be
less ‘utopian’ in its emancipatory ambitions. Incremental and piecemeal change is
more doable given the economic pressures managers confront in their daily routines and practices.
A similar set of reforms are outlined by Wickert and Schaefer (2014) in their notion of ‘progressive performativity’. The weakness of
CMS for them is that it ‘provides only limited guidance on how (counterbalancing) values could
be embedded into organizational practices and procedures in collaboration with, rather than in opposition to, managers’
(Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 7, emphasis in original). They too advance a broader understanding of performativity related to
language: ‘The performative element, we suggest, requires researchers to “activate” the language that managers use . . . In that way,
CMS scholars may support managers to “talk into existence” new (counterbalancing) behaviours and practices’ (Wickert and
Schaefer, 2014: 3). Two elements of progressive performativity follow from this proposition. First, through micro-level engagement
CMS researchers can actively ally themselves with selected managers (preferably middlemanagers) to raise awareness and identify
alternative speech acts. Second, this may lead to reflexive conscientization, whereby scholars help create discursive spaces ‘in which
managers are gently “nudged” to reflect on their actions and the organizational processes to which their actions relate . . . [it seeks
to] raise the critical consciousness of managers’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 3).
This can only be credibly achieved, according to Wickert and Schaefer, if scholars put aside the classical emancipatory ideals of CMS
since they discourage micro-collaborations with managers, introduce concepts that alienate practitioners and ultimately make
progressive change seemingly impossible. Utopianism, in particular, according to Wickert and Schaefer, introduces
‘complex problems [that] fill people with anxiety and limit their capacity to think and act
creatively’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 14). They recommend non-utopian and ‘small-win’ initiatives
instead, ‘moving forward by actively working towards incremental, rather than radical
transformation of unfavourable social conditions’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2014: 9–10).
Limitations of the new performative turn in Critical Management Studies
Space does not permit a full elaboration of the critical and progressive models of performativity being recommended to CMS
researchers. But it is no exaggeration to suggest that the argumentation involved presents a rather caricatured image of the CMS
community when exhorted to ‘overcome its often hypocritical and unproductive claims that its output has no performative intent
whatsoever’ (Spicer et al. 2009: 554). As Alvesson et al. (2009: 10, emphasis in original) argue, non-performativity
‘emphatically does not mean an antagonistic attitude to any type of performing’. CMS only refrains from instrumentally
contributing to the mean-ends rationality of corporate managerialism. It is not against all impact, since
that would render its criticism something of a self-serving exercise that rightly ought to be admonished. Having said that,
advocates of a new performativity do have a good point when they highlight the vagueness and
ambiguity around what mechanisms of impact CMS actually does favour. How can the
community help make a practical difference to organizational life so that they are less exploitative and more equitable?
Critical and progressive performativity may hold promise in this regard. However, we feel these models of influence carry
overtly optimistic assumptions about the power of language to change certain structural
realities as well as the capabilities of CMS scholars to perform emancipatory change through
discourse and micro-level engagement. There may certainly be some cases where getting close to managers, empathizing with their
constraints and manipulating their language may indeed yield the (micro) fulfilment of aspects of the CMS mission. For example,
scholars have engaged with managers in developing critical perspectives on leadership (Cunliffe, 2009; Cunliffe and Eriksen, 2011)
and promoting reflexivity in managerial practice (Barge, 2004). However, we are concerned that the conceptualizations of
performativity proposed lack a realistic appreciation of the accumulated social forces guiding
organizational behaviour in these institutionalized contexts, including the profit motive,
shareholder value, cost externalization, means-ends efficiency and so forth. While these
forces are no doubt social and linguistically constructed too (e.g. see Callon [2010] in relation to the
economy), they have also been politically and institutionally embedded over time and
cannot simply be talked away. It is these conditions, we argue, that need to be taken into
consideration when assessing the impact of CMS scholarship. Without a wider political analysis of
organizations, institutions and markets, the capacity to perform economic rationality differently will
be limited, which in turn restricts the scope for politics, political subjectivity and dialogue (see
Cochoy et al., 2010). Hence, we would expect the mechanisms recommended by critical and progressive
performativities to frequently fail rather than succeed.
 Alt---AT: Psychoanalysis---2AC---No Scale-Up
No scale-up and the thesis of their links are wrong. Economic systems don’t have
psyches.
Boldizzoni, 20—Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(Francesco, “How Capitalism Survives,” Foretelling the End of Capitalism: Intellectual Misadventures
since Karl Marx, Chapter 6, pg 255-259, dml)
Those who challenge the efficiency explanation generally do so because they start from an opposite interpretation of capitalism’s
nature. These authors tend to emphasize the elements of irrationality in the capitalist process and in the
belief system of its actors that work in favor of its perpetuation. Capitalism is thought to be sustained by
the self-estrangement it produces, by the repression (or stimulation) of desire, by irrational expectations,
and more generally by its capacity to interact with the actors’ emotional sphere. Contributions to this
interpretation come from currents of philosophy and social theory variously related to Critical Theory or poststructuralism. All of
them share the idea that capitalism appropriates certain human needs and turns them to its advantage. Capitalism therefore persists
either because of the power and seduction it exerts over people’s minds or because of the way it appeals to deep needs. We could call
this broad perspective the “social unconscious thesis.”
Critical Theory combines Freud and Marx, not the later Marx but the earlier humanist Marx who had reflected, in the “Paris
Manuscripts,” on the psychological mechanisms of alienation.45 Indeed, the concept of alienation is at the heart of Erich
Fromm’s attempt to psychoanalyze twentieth-century capitalist society and his idea that capitalist subjects,
estranged from themselves, lose all connection with their “true needs” and embrace the senseless logic of the machine that enslaves
them.46 Another version, unquestionably indebted to Freud’s analysis of “uneasiness in civilization,” is that capitalism
obtains conformity from its subjects through the repression of desire. They live surrounded by things
but are unable to recognize their “true desires,” whose satisfaction alone would lead them to a meaningful life. This repression
affects all the actors of the capitalist process indiscriminately, regardless of their role, and hence of their relationship with capital.
This is an idea that, with Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (1955), marked the transition from the critique of capitalism as a critique of
inequality to the critique of capitalism as a critique of repression, the kind of discourse that would inform the counterculture of the
1960s. This vision is irreparably linked to an era in which social conflict was reduced to a minimum. Since it was thought that the
economic problems of capitalism had been solved, one could afford the luxury of moralizing about capitalist society. As such, it
appears dated today. But beyond this, its main weakness as a theory of capitalist reproduction is that it does
not explain what the causes of the success of alienation are or who are the agents of
repression. Capitalism may be a diabolical machine, but it has no autonomous agency. This
defect has not been remedied by recent work in the same vein, where the focus is shifted from the (natural)
desires that capitalism represses to the (artificial) ones that it feeds—so the drive to consume and to accumulate is explained by the
continuous and illusory quest for “a more complete satisfaction.”47 The most promising recent contribution to critical
sociology’s understanding of capitalist reproduction comes from Jens Beckert’s concept of “fictional expectations.” Beckert claims
that capitalism creates a regime of “secular enchantment,” which keeps actors enmeshed in its cogs thanks to the continuous, albeit
unrealistic, expectations it fuels.48 Beckert certainly captures an important element. However, when he moves on to identifying the
factors that keep this machine of illusions in motion, these turn out to be the institutional
elements of competition and credit, which leaves open the problem of the material and cultural
structures underpinning them, not to mention the question of the relationship between these structures.
Poststructuralist interpretations—a galaxy that goes from Foucault to Deleuze to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri—differ from
critical-theoretical approaches in that they solve the problem of agency by denying that contemporary capitalism has a
manipulative power (power, in Foucauldian terms, is immanent in the structures of subjectivity, not externally imposed). At the
micro level, poststructuralism underlines the compatibility of capitalism with the emotional structure of modern
social actors who subject themselves to voluntary enslavement, drawing from it emotional satisfaction. This leads
to curious
claims, such as, for example, that “capitalism capitalizes on our inability to locate the sources of our
anxiety and enjoins us to address our trauma by passing its effects on to others, thereby
elaborating, intensifying, and widening the competitive imperatives of capitalist networks.”49 What “anxiety”? What
“trauma”? one may wonder. Possibly the angst that results from the loss of traditional forms of attachment. Modernity
becomes a convenient black box with which to explain the birth and evolution of the
capitalist social character, in the same way as the gradual shift of modernity toward postmodernity heralds the character’s
future redemption. Modernity and postmodernity are therefore used as conceptual passe-partouts—tautological and
ultimately meaningless. At the macro level, the biopolitical reorganization of power and its deterritorialization, which
Hardt and Negri call “Empire,” does away with the modern regime of disciplinary power, thus generating a potential for
liberation.50 For them, as for Deleuze and Guattari, the crisis of disciplinary power, as well as its dissolution into introjected
mechanisms of control, “disrupts the linear and totalitarian figure of capitalist development. . . . Resistances are no longer marginal
but active in the center of a society that opens up in networks; the individual points are singularized in a thousand plateaus.”51 This
makes them dream about the construction of a global “counter-Empire” by global desertion and coordinated acts of sabotaging.
The most serious responsibility of poststructuralism is to make assumptions about the cultural sphere, and to claim for the
symbolic a space independent from the material conditions of existence, without having an
organic concept of culture, and indeed rejecting it with contempt, as if one could understand a foreign language without knowing its
grammar.52 Its denial of any order and rationality in reality, as reflected in its verbal obfuscations, hides confusion and
logical contradictions. Capitalist reproduction cannot be understood without investigating the cultural sphere, but at
the same time this undertaking requires a rigorous concept of culture.
 Alt---AT: Psychoanalysis---2AC---No Solvency
The alt can’t change capitalist desires—it matters if they don’t solve their impacts.
Sivaraman, 20—Ministry of Finance, Government of India, and ED, IMF, India (Madras, “Review of
Psychoanalysis and the GlObal,” International Journal of Environmental Studies, 77:1, 176-181, dml)

The editor is a Professor of Environmental Studies but the material edited consists of articles by scholars who have analysed every
subject in the book according to the theories of Jacques Lacan a pre-eminent psychoanalyst whose controversial
contributions appear
to be inexplicably influential. There are twelve essays on subjects varying from capitalism to
culture and from empowering women to architecture. All the authors have attempted to look at their themes from a
Lacanian
standpoint. For a lay reader who succeeds in reading all the contributions to this book, it would still be obscure as to
what purpose the Lacanian psychoanalytic approach would serve particularly in policy
formulation by governments or in corporate behaviour toward individuals and society.
The book is not easy to read; the language of psychology and philosophy has been used to describe even common ideas. In his introduction Kapoor has stated ‘this book is about the hole at the heart of the glObal; it
deploys psycho analysis to expose the unconscious desires, excesses and antagonisms that accompany the world of economic flows, cultural circulation, and sociopolitical change . . . . . . .the point here is to uncover
what Jacques Lacan calls the Real of the global – its rifts, gaps, exceptions and contradictions.’(p ix)
What is that hole in the global does not come out clearly, since Lacan’s idea of ‘the real’ is impossible to define. But one may infer that it is the reality behind the façade of everything that globalisation sought to
achieve, the eradication of poverty and the spread of prosperity through liberalism in both politics and economics. Globalisation only led to long term financial crisis, the spread of gross inequality in incomes and
aggressive financial capitalism degenerating into a new kind of imperialism. Although all this happened in small or big measure the fact remains that millions of poor also came out of abject poverty. No author has
attempted a solution to fill that hole. The world has seen imperialism, fascism and finally liberalism and now with the rise of Trumpism in the USA, Brexit, Mr. Xi becoming almost a life time president of China
and the rise of religiously oriented government in India, no one knows whether the world has bid goodbye to all that liberalism stood for. Is Lacan’s idea of the true nature of man – the real – now coming to the
fore? If so, is Lacan right? This compilation has sought to give some answers analysing the subconscious of the individuals who constitute the society.

A general reader has to plod through the articles to understand what exactly the authors want to convey. Their overall
position appears to be that most of the ills we see in capitalism or its connected areas come from the
underlying desire to accumulate even without purpose as the urge is so strong in every
individual in a Lacanian sense of the Real which itself cannot be defined very clearly. What
is meant, it seems, is that the real is a part of nature from which human beings have severed
themselves by language but to which they try to get back again and again.
So unless a person is able to destroy this desire to continue the existing order of things that
gives enjoyment but which is leading humanity into a stage of inevitable environmental collapse, by
focusing on alternatives that are more human and beneficial to all, this desire will persist
inexorably to a collapse. That is the strength of capitalism. Despite the knowledge, that it creates extremes in income
distribution, affects the environment resulting in permanent damage to the earth and also the happiness of the future generations, it
continues tenaciously.
Even while the current generation witnesses its ravages on society the desires that lie in the subconscious of
individuals impel them to continue with the capitalist policies that are taking them to disaster.
This is reflected in the financial crisis, in the way environmental damage is faced, in architecture, in the treatment of women, and in
the move toward urbanisation across the globe.
None of the authors has attempted to clarify whether such an esoteric analysis, a
paradigm change in the way in which ordinary mortals look at these happenings in the world,
has any relevance to policy makers who can use them for changes in the way laws are
framed, or institutions are governed, to make alterations in the subconscious of the
people to change their desires, so as to fall in conformity with the overall welfare of mankind now and in the future.
This does seem to be more than a small oversight.
Ordinarily understood psychoanalysis is used to probe deep into the unconscious mind of
individuals for treatment of mental health disorders. When we deal with capitalism, gender equality,
corruption, architecture of buildings, women’s empowerment and similar social
problems that have inbuilt destructive elements, can psychoanalysis provide solutions?
In the experience of this reviewer, the main point is that policy makers should understand the acquisitive urge. There may be
many existing systems of ethical constraints which can be accepted to produce an
improved outcome for the world. What is seen, at least as regards environment and climate change, is a very slow,
halting, apologetic set of legal steps to control pollution, fully realising that the apocalypse of climate collapse is approaching at a
faster pace. The book would have been more provocative if it had dealt with this struggle between governance and the people from a
Lacanian perspective.
 Alt---AT: Psychoanalysis---2AC---Psychoanalysis=Bad
Psychoanalysis isn’t universal and scaling it up to political conclusions is
colonialist.
Rogers, 17—Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Political Sciences at the University of
Melbourne and Adjunct Professor at Griffith Law School, Queensland (Juliet, “Is Psychoanalysis
Universal? Politics, Desire, and Law in Colonial Contexts,” Political Psychology, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2017, dml)
The presumption of a universal form of desire is an important starting point for the
analyst of any patient who arrives on the couch in the psychoanalytic clinic. The psychoanalyst can only offer certain parameters,
with all their limitations. The patient, if the analyst allows for an interrogation of their own forms of resistance, however, can speak
back to any frame of desire that the analyst presumes or proposes. And the analyst—if Jacques Lacan’s thoughts on resistance are
taken seriously (Lacan, 2007, p. 497; Rogers, 2016, pp. 183–187)—must listen, attend, learn, and adapt. But when the desires
of subjects are extended into the political realm, when the wants and needs of every subject
are presumed to articulate with a psychoanalytic notion of universal desire, then
something is lost. That something might be called the desire of the other, or it might not be called desire at all.
The desire of the other is not easily seen in the wake of European Enlightenment that has engulfed the imagination of psychoanalytic
and political theorists and practitioners alike. It is not easily seen, and it is not easily conversed with when epistemological work
presumes a trajectory of desire and then applies it. In this application, there is little space for a radically other
performance of politics as action or imagination to appear. The subject who is subsumed into
this imagination—the subject Gayatri Spivak (1996)1 describes as “the Other of Europe”—has little opportunity to
do more than “utter” under the weight of its imagined subjectivity. As Spivak (1999) says:
[I]n the constitution of that Other of Europe, great care was taken to obliterate the textual
ingredients with which such a subject could cathect, could occupy (invest?) its itinerary—not only
by ideological and scientific production, but also by the institution of the law. (p. 266)
Psychoanalysis is as guilty of exercising such a form of “great care” as many of the occupations of
French intellectuals that Spivak has criticized for doing so. Psychoanalysis, with its attention to the many forms of the
unconscious, can appear otherwise than guilty of this. It can appear more open, generous, and curious about the many forms that
desire can take. In its later forms of attention to a politically constituted “symbolic order” under the guidance of Lacan (2007), it can
also appear more attentive to the particularities of desires informed by a politics of the time. I argue here, however, that attention is
already constituted by an imagination of a subject who wants, who needs, who desires
objects, things, rights, in a mode which cannot not start from a point of origin, and a
particular political form of origin which then precludes the recognition—in both the clinic
and in political analysis2 —of other forms of desire, “with which such a subject could cathect, could occupy (invest?) its
itinerary.” When practices such as political psychoanalysis presume a particular form of
desire, what is at stake in this constitution of desire is the political subject or the Other of
Europe who cannot “speak,” in Spivak’s terms. What is lost might be called radical desire; it
might be an itinerary which is cathected or invested otherwise, and, as such, it might not
be recognizable in psychoanalysis or in contemporary political psychology at all.
The nonrecognition of the Other of Europe, in her many forms, is a consistent political
problem—documented often and insistently by critical race and postcolonial analysts such as Spivak, but also Sanjay Seth, Leila
Gandhi, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Elizabeth Povinelli, Ashis Nandy, Christine Black, and Homi
Bhabha. Such nonrecognition, however, when repostulated in political psychoanalysis has
another effect. The trajectory of the symptoms of political practice—including desires for law, justice,
particular election outcomes, rights, socioeconomic configurations, or even for the formation of political structures themselves
(democracy being only one)— presume a form of desire that refers to, and endures in, its
constitution. As Spivak (1999) notes in her critique of power and desire as universal:
[S]o is “desire” misleading because of its paleonomic burden of an originary phenomenal passion—from philosophical intentionality
on the one hand to psychoanalytic definitive lack on the other. (p. 107)
The psychoanalytic definitive lack she speaks of refers to the Lacanian configuration of desire as always attempting to recover, to
master, to instantiate an identity that is supposedly interminably lost as soon as language acts upon the subject. This lack is
inaugurated through the subjects relation to what it cannot have, or, in Spivak’s terms, the “originary
phenomenal passion” referring to the oedipal scene, which is presumed to be the origin of desire for all .
This configuration of desire renders all subjects desiring of overcoming that lack. But it is a
particular form of desire and a particular quality of lack. The presumption of this
quality—the presumption about what and how people desire—I argue here, must be accountable to the
politico-historical configurations which have produced it.
Politico-historical configurations, by definition, are not universal. That is, contra Zizek (2006), I argue
that not all the world is a symptom, but that any psychoanalysis of a political symptom, of a
political subject, or of the desires examined through psychoanalysis as they emerge in a
political arena, assume a particular formation of desire. And that such an analysis operates within
the parameters and employs the understandings of the oedipal scene, or, simply of a subjectivity split by language, including the
language of law. As Lacan (2006) says “language begins along with law” (p. 225). While this split subjectivity may
appear to be universal—and is convincingly employed as such by psychoanalytic and political theorists, and often
philosophers (Butler, 1997; Epstein, 2013; Zevnik, 2016; Zizek, 2006), this splitting refers specifically to an oedipal
lineage, as a particular instantiation of Oedipal Law, and, as I argue positive law as a liberal law concerned
with rights and with what once can or cannot have from the polis as much as what one can take from the
father. Thus the “originary phenomenal passion,” which a psychoanalysis of the political engages, always refers back as I will
explain, to a (primal) father as a sovereign in a wrangle with his sons, a scene which itself cannot not be understood without its
resonances to the French Revolution.
Alt---AT: Psychoanalysis---2AC---Psychoanalysis=Wrong
Psychoanalysis has no empirical basis.
Paris 17 [Dr Paris is Professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, and Research Associate,
Department of Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital. "Is Psychoanalysis Still Relevant to Psychiatry?"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5459228/]
In an era in which psychiatry is
dominated by neuroscience-based models, psychological
constructs tend to be neglected and may be taken seriously only when they have neural
correlates.37 Some psychoanalysts have sought to link their model with neurobiological
research and to claim that newer methods of studying the brain can validate their
theories.5,6
Mark Solms, a South African neuropsychologist, is the founder of “neuropsychoanalysis.” This new field, with its own society and its
own journal, proposes to use neuroimaging to confirm analytic theories. Its key idea is that subjective experience and the
unconscious mind can be observed through neuroimaging.5 It is known that brain processes can be seen on brain imaging even
before they have entered consciousness.38 However, claims that neuroimaging validate Freud’s model of the unconscious can be
based only on “cherry-picking” the literature. The observed correspondences are superficial and hardly support the complex edifice
of psychoanalytic theory.
Solms39 has also suggested that Freud’s ideas about dreams are consistent with neuroscience research based on rapid eye
movement (REM) activity. This attempt to rescue a century-old theory met with opposition from dream researchers who consider
Freud’s clinical speculations to be incompatible with empirical data.40,41
The proposal to establish a discipline of neuropsychoanalysis also met with a mixed reception
from traditional psychoanalysts, who did not want to dilute Freud’s wine with neuroscientific water.42
Neuroscientists, who are more likely to see links to psychology as lying in cognitive science,43
have ignored this idea. In summary, neuropsychoanalysis is being used a way to justify long-
standing models, without attempting to find something new or to develop an integration of
perspectives on psychology.
However, Eric Kandel,44 influential in the light of his Nobel Prize for the study of the neurochemistry of memory, has taken a
sympathetic view of the use of biological methods to study psychoanalytic theory. Kandel had wanted to be an analyst before
becoming a neuroscientist.45 But Kandel, who does not actively practice psychiatry, may be caught
in a time warp, unaware that psychoanalysis has been overtaken by competitors in the field of
psychotherapy.
Another attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with science has come from the literature on
neuroplasticity.46 It is now known that neurogenesis occurs in some brain regions (particularly the hippocampus) during
adulthood and that neural connections undergo modification in all parts of the brain. There is also evidence that CBT can produce
brain changes that are visible using imaging.47 These findings have not been confirmed in psychoanalytic
therapies. However, Norman Doidge, a Canadian psychoanalyst, has argued that psychoanalysis can
change the brain.48 This may be the case for all psychotherapies. However, more recently,
Doidge49 has claimed that mental exercises can reverse the course of severe neurological and
psychiatric problems, including chronic pain, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and autism. While these
books have been best-sellers, most of their ideas in the second volume,49 based on anecdotes
rather than on clinical trials, have had little impact in medicine. This story underscores the
difficulty of reconciling the perspectives and methods of psychoanalysis with scientific
methods based on empirical testing.
Psychoanalysis and the Humanities
Psychoanalysis claimed to be a science but did not function like one. It failed to
operationalize its hypotheses, to test them with empirical methods, or to remove
constructs that failed to gain scientific support.1 In this way, the intellectual world of
psychoanalysis more closely resembles the humanities. Today, with few psychiatrists or clinical psychologists
entering psychoanalytic training, the door has been opened to practitioners with backgrounds in other disciplines, including the
humanities.
This trend is related to a hermeneutic mode of thought,50 which focuses on meaningful interpretations of phenomena, rather than
on empirical testing of hypotheses and observations. Since the time of Freud, the typical psychoanalytic paper has consisted of
speculations backed up with illustrations, similar to the methods of literary theory and criticism.
One model currently popular in the humanities is “critical theory.”51 This postmodernist
approach uses Marxist concepts to explain phenomena ranging from literature to politics. It
proposes that truth is entirely relative and often governed by hidden social forces. In its most
radical form, in the work of Michel Foucault,52 critical theory and postmodernism take an antiscience position, denying the
existence of objective truth and viewing scientific findings as ways of defending the
“hegemony” of those in power.
Some humanist scholars have adopted the ideas of Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst who created
his own movement and whose eccentric clinical practice resembled that of a cult leader.53
Moreover, recruitment of professionals and academics with no training in science could
lead to an increasing isolation of the discipline. While only a few contemporary
psychoanalysts have embraced postmodernism, the humanities have made use of
psychoanalytical concepts for their own purposes as a way of understanding literature and
history.

Unconscious memory does not exist – the brain is a computer.

Nick Chater, professor of behavioral science @ Warwick Business School, ‘18 “There Is No Such Thing
as Unconscious Thought,” Excerpt from The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the
Improvising Brain, Yale University Press.
The brain is a cooperative computing machine—large networks of neurons collectively piece together the solution
to a single problem. Importantly, the cycle of thought proceeds one step at a time. The brain’s networks of
neurons are highly interconnected, so there seems little scope for assigning different problems to
different brain networks. If interconnected neurons are working on entirely different problems,
then the signals they pass between them will be hopelessly at cross-purposes—and neither task will be completed
successfully: Each neuron has no idea which of the signals it receives are relevant to the problem it is working on, and which are
just irrelevant junk. If the brain solves problems through the cooperation computation of vast
networks of individually sluggish neurons, then any specific network of neurons can work on
just one solution to one problem at a time.
Even the introspection of geniuses is not to be taken at face value.
Solving difficult problems, whether mathematical, musical, or of any other kind, is the very antithesis of a routine, specialized
problem with a dedicated brain network: On the contrary, thinking about such problems will need to engage most of the brain. So
the idea that profound unconscious thought can be “running in the background” as we go about
our everyday lives is fanciful indeed. Routine and highly practiced activities aside, the cycle of thought can
attend to, and make sense of, only one set of information at a time.
Poincaré and Hindemith cannot possibly be right. If they are spending their days actively thinking about other things, their brains
are not unobtrusively solving deep mathematical problems or composing complex pieces of music, perhaps over days or weeks, only
to reveal the results in a sudden flash. Yet, driven by the intuitive appeal of unconscious thought,
psychologists have devoted a great deal of energy in searching for evidence for unconscious
mental work. Other researchers have, though, a simpler explanation, which involves no unconscious
thought at all.
Let’s consider why one gets stuck with a difficult problem in the first place. What is special about such problems is that you can’t
solve them through a routine set of steps—you have to look at the problem in the “right way” before you can make progress (e.g.,
with an anagram, you might need to focus on a few key letters; in deep mathematics or musical composition, the space of options
might be large and varied). So ideally, the right approach would be to fluidly explore the range of possible angles on the problem,
until hitting on the right one. Yet this is not so easy: Once we have been looking at the same problem for a while, we feel ourselves
stuck or going round in circles.
Mental cul-de-sacs occur when our brains fail to find a satisfactory analysis or interpretation. Conscious attempts to clear the cul-de-
sac can, of course, often be successful: We jettison some information, and focus instead on slightly different information. We focus
on different parts of a cryptic crossword clue (perhaps the word “jumble” means this is some kind of anagram). We actively dredge
up different pieces of knowledge that we think might help us. (“Oh—this looks like a geometry problem with circles and angles; I
learnt about circle theorems at school; what were they all about?”) All too often, though, such deliberate attacks on a problem fail.
Indeed, we can find ourselves endlessly going down the same mental cul-de-sacs, such as when I search for the word artichoke,
where my typical internal dialogue is something like: “No, not avocado! Not asparagus! Not aubergine! And certainly not aspidistra!
Help!”
Breaking out of mental cul-de-sacs is precisely what a break will give us. A clear mind is more likely to succeed than a mind filled
with partial solutions and suggestions which have clearly failed. And, by sheer chance, we might even bump into a clue that helps.
But probably the most important aspect of setting a problem aside is that, when we return to it, we see it afresh unencumbered by
our previous failed attempts. Often, our new perspective will be no more successful than the old, but, now and again, we will chance
on the right perspective—the pieces of the mental puzzle will suddenly snap into place.
Now and again, of course, thoughts do spontaneously “pop into our minds”—names we had struggled to remember, things we have
forgotten to do, and occasionally even insights into tricky problems with which we have been struggling. But this isn’t the product of
unconscious, background thought. It arises when we momentarily flip back to thinking about an old problem for a moment and, now
free of the unhelpful mental loops which got us stuck in the first place, we almost instantly see a solution that had evaded us before—
or, in some cases, dimly suspect where such a solution might lie. The “almost instantly” is key: The answer hits us fast, before we are
even aware we have returned to the problem. This sensation of sudden insight never occurs for problems that can’t, if looked at the
right way, be solved—or partially solved—in a flash. Suppose I try and fail to calculate 17 x 17 in my head; there is no chance that,
while idly waiting at a bus stop, I’ll suddenly think “I bet its 289!”
Poincaré’s description of his particular method of solving mathematical problems suggests why he was particularly susceptible to
brilliant flashes of insight. His strategy was to work out the outlines of the solution, without pen and paper; and only then to,
somewhat laboriously, translate his intuitions into the symbolic language of mathematics, to be checked and verified. Crucially, for
Poincaré, mathematical problems were transformed into perceptual problems: and with the right perceptual intuition, the creating a
proof would be relatively routine, if slow. A perceptual problem is just the kind of problem that can be solved in a single mental step
—provided that we happen to lock onto just the right information and see the pattern in that information in just the right way like
the Dalmatian and doleful cow.
Poincaré’s mathematical brainwaves, like the sudden resolutions of the initially baffling Dalmatian or cow images, are
fundamentally perceptual. Crucially, in neither case is the sudden revelation the product of hours or days of unconscious thought.
Instead, the solution is found in a single mental step when we contemplate the problem again. Having broken free of our previous
and incorrect analysis, by happy chance our brains alight upon the correct solution.
This viewpoint is nicely illustrated by one of the most celebrated stories of scientific insight: the discovery of the structure of benzene
by the great 19th-century chemist August Kekulé. The brainwave struck as he was having a daydream in which a snake began to
swallow its own tail. It suddenly struck Kekulé that benzene might itself have a circular structure; and before long he had worked out
his detailed analysis of the chemical structure of the benzene ring.
Yet his momentary insight was surely a suspicion that the structure of benzene might be circular; and surely he must have followed
endless false trails before alighting on the correct answer. Indeed, Kekulé only knew he had the correct answer after carefully piecing
together the detailed structure of the benzene ring, and checking that it worked. So the “flash of inspiration” is often perhaps better
termed a “flash of suspicion.” On those rare occasions when the flash of suspicion turns out to be justified, it is so easy to have the
illusion that one’s brain had somehow worked out the complete answer, and checked it in detail, before suggesting it to the conscious
mind. And if that were true, this chain of events would, of course, require unconscious thought, and lots of it. But the checking and
analysis comes after the momentary mental flash, not before.
We might wonder how it is that the right perceptual interpretation happens to come to mind. Could it be that, while we may be
unable actively to pay attention to more than one thing at a time, our brains can unconsciously search our mental archives, pulling
out, as it were, useful files for later use? If so, then Poincaré’s unconscious could perhaps have been running through potentially
relevant bits of higher mathematics, stored over a lifetime of study. Then, on returning to a problem, some vital clues to the solution
might have been ready to hand—and a flash of insight would result. Perhaps the brain can’t solve a problem unconsciously, but
unconscious activation of relevant memories might prepare the ground for finding the solution.
Can we find evidence for unconscious memory search? With my colleagues Elizabeth Maylor and Greg Jones at
the University of Warwick, I carried out an experiment some years ago that tested whether unconscious memory searches
can help out the conscious mind.
Rather than choose deep mathematical reasoning, we chose the simplest possible task: retrieving familiar
words from memory. Suppose, for example, that I ask you to name as many foods as you can. Despite the vastness of your
food vocabulary, you will almost certainly find yourself slowing down surprisingly quickly, with flurries of fruits, bursts of baked
goods, and surges of seasonings, punctuated by surprising, and ever longer, silences. Suppose, instead, I ask you to name as many
countries as you can. Although there are 200 or so countries recognized by the United Nations, most of which will be familiar to you,
you will, again, struggle sooner than you might expect.
But what if I asked you to name as many food items or countries as possible? The only way to do this is to focus on foods for a while,
and then move over to countries when foods are getting tricky, and then back to foods again when you are running out of countries—
and so on. This is interesting in itself—perhaps indicating that our memories are organized so that foods are linked to other foods,
and countries are linked to other countries. But this switching strategy is also interesting for another reason: It provides a way of
finding out how far we are able to continue to search for the category we are not currently generating.
If unconscious thought is impossible, any background racing around our mental archives is entirely ruled out. That is, if we are
scouring our memories for foods, we cannot simultaneously search for countries, and vice versa. If so, we should generate foods or
countries more rapidly than we can generate one or the other alone.
Suppose, instead, that while focusing our conscious minds on generating foods, unconscious mental search processes can work
away, in the background, unearthing a string of countries. Then, when we switch to countries, we should be able rapidly to download
these—they would not need to be found afresh, because unconscious search would have identified them already. If it is indeed
possible to search for foods or countries simultaneously (even though we can consciously report the results of only one search at a
time), then the rate at which we generate answers in both categories should be substantially greater than the rate at which we can
generate answers from either category alone.
Across a wide range of test stimuli, the results were unequivocal: There is absolutely no sign that we can
search for x’s when we are currently thinking about y’s; or search for y’s when we have been
thinking about x’s. As soon as we switch from searching one category to searching another, all
search processes for that first category appear to cease abruptly. While it would be highly
advantageous for an unconscious process to keep running in the background, there is absolutely
no evidence that this occurs.
An active unconscious, able to amplify the power of our limited conscious minds, would be a wonderful boon, working away on
countless difficult problems, while we go about daily lives; and overcoming the slow step-by-step flow of conscious thought. But
unconscious thought is, for all that, nothing more than a myth, however charming.
 Alt---AT: Solves Innovation
Socialist innovation fails
Pethokoukis 21(Senior Fellow DeWitt Wallace Chair Editor, AEIdeas Blog, Why Socialist Economies
Fail, December 15, 2021, https://www.aei.org/economics/why-socialist-economies-fail/)//BRownRice
Consider: Without competition and threat of failure, companies won’t engage in game-changing
innovation and the adoption of new technology. In his book The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry, economist Joseph Berliner
termed this market mechanism the “invisible foot” — a complement to Adam Smith’s invisible hand — and argued that its absence helps

explain the lack of innovation in the Soviet Union. Berliner writes that “from the point of view of
innovation, the evil of monopoly is that it enables producers to enjoy high rates of profit without
having to undertake the exacting and risky activities associated with technological change .”
The word “risky” is key here because the innovation may turn out to be a bad one. And even if a
new technology eventually boosts production, there may be an adjustment period where
production is lower than otherwise as the technology is integrated. Science historian Loren Graham provides an example
of this dynamic in his 2013 book, Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? (and gives Berliner a shout-out):
the fatal flaw of the Soviet economic system was its inability to promote
As the economist Joseph Berliner observed,

creativity and innovation. The frustrations of Soviet engineers who were so frequently unable to introduce their innovations into practice were perhaps
most graphically illustrated in a famous 1956 novel by Vladimir Dudintsev titled Not by Bread Alone. In this novel an engineer who has developed a superior method of making
metal pipes vainly tries to gain the attention of his employer or anybody else in the Soviet bureaucracy who might want to improve Soviet production methods. He finds out that
Soviet administrators are primarily interested in production output, not improvements, because the administrators are rewarded for achieving increases in gross output. They
oppose any innovation that would mean temporarily stopping the production line while new
equipment is installed. Dudintsev’s novel struck such a responsive chord among Soviet engineers (by that time the largest group of educated people in the
Soviet Union) that it became a best-seller until repressed by Soviet authorities.
But the lack of an “invisible foot” and its impact on the Soviet economy is just part of the
Graham thesis about why a country capable of great scientific discovery and invention was not
capable of economically deploying those advances across its economy in a way that would boost
productivity. Again, Graham:
The person who develops an idea with commercial potential needs a variety of sustaining
societal factors if he or she is to be successful. These factors are attitudinal, economic, legal, organizational,
and political. Society needs to value inventiveness and practicality; the economic system

needs to provide investment opportunities; the legal system must protect intellectual
property and reward inventors; and the political system must not fear technological
innovations or successful businesspeople but promote them. Stifling bureaucracies and corruption need to be restrained.
Many people in Western societies and, increasingly, Asian ones take these requirements for granted. Just how difficult sometimes they are to fulfill is illustrated by Russian
history and by Russia today.
In other words, Russia had a bad case of socialism, which intensified lots of pre-existing problems. But what about China? Graham concedes its fast-growing economy is “the
greatest challenge to the basic thesis of this book, that technology is most creative and successful in a democratic, law-governed society. Much will depend on the future, but
China so far has been much more successful in achieving economic growth than it has in
creating its own novel high technologies.” Indeed, being a fast follower isn’t the same as
pushing forward the innovation frontier, a reality recognized by Beijing in its industrial policy plans to make itself the world leader
across of a range of advanced technologies.
But is brute-force, top-down planning, even with tremendous funding, enough without the sort
of innovation ecology that Graham describes? Cai Xia suggests we should be skeptical. Cai was a professor of political theory at the
Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing from 1998 to 2012 and has lived in exile in America since 2018. This is from her new essay in The Economist:
Then there is innovation, the basis of future growth. An essential precondition for creativity is respect for human dignity,
protection of basic human rights, and upholding freedom of thought and speech. For China’s economic development to continue, the

country needs to follow the general trend of freedom and democracy in the world. However, the
one-party system is fundamentally opposed to freedom and democracy. It is not only a huge obstacle to China’s
development, but a catastrophe in terms of civil liberties. The pillars of China’s one-party dictatorship are violence and terror, lies and deceit, coupled with strict surveillance.
I have previously written about China’s productivity problem, one which — if Graham, Cai, and I are correct — will not be fixed under the authoritarian, state-capitalist model
the failure of socialist economies should also provide a few lessons for
being pushed by Xi Jinping. Of course,

America about the importance of democratic capitalism, even with all its disruption, to create a
flourishing society that helps its citizens to maximize their human potential.
Even though it’s not perfect, capitalist innovation solves its own flaws
Schrager 20(Allison Schrager is an economist, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and co-
founder of LifeCycle Finance Partners, LLC, a risk advisory firm, Why Socialism Wont Work, Jan 15 2020,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/15/socialism-wont-work-capitalism-still-best/)//BRownRice
With increasingly ubiquitous iPhones, internet, central air conditioning, flat-screen TVs, and indoor plumbing, few
in the developed world would want to go back to life 100, 30, or even 10 years ago. Indeed, around the world, the last two centuries have
brought vast improvements in material living standards; billions of people have been lifted from poverty, and life

expectancy across income levels has broadly risen. Most of that progress came from
capitalist economies.
Yet those economies are not without their problems. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the gap between the rich

and poor has become intolerably large as business owners and highly educated workers in urban areas have become richer while workers’ wages in rural areas have
stagnated. In most rich countries, more trade has brought a bigger, better variety of goods, but it has also displaced many jobs.

With social instability in the form of mass protests, Brexit, the rise of populism, and deep polarization knocking at the capitalist economies’ doors, much

of the progress of the last several decades is in peril. For some pundits and policymakers, the solution is clear: socialism, which tends to be cited as a

method for addressing everything from inequality and injustice to climate change.
Yet the very ills that socialists identify are best addressed through innovation, productivity gains,

and better rationing of risk. And capitalism is still far and away the best, if not only, way to
generate those outcomes.
Today’s socialism is difficult to define . Traditionally, the term meant total state ownership of

capital, as in the Soviet Union, North Korea, or Maoist China. Nowadays, most people don’t take such an extreme view. In
Europe, social democracy means the nationalization of many industries and very generous welfare states. And today’s rising socialists are

rebranding the idea to mean an economic system that delivers all the best parts of capitalism
(growth and rising living standards) without the bad (inequality, economic cycles).
But no perfect economic system exists; there are always trade-offs—in the most extreme
form between total state ownership of capital and unfettered markets without any regulation or
welfare state. Today, few would opt for either pole; what modern socialists and capitalists really
disagree on is the right level of government intervention.
Modern socialists want more, but not complete, state ownership. They’d like to nationalize
certain industries. In the United States, that’s health care—a plan supported by Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth
Warren (who does not call herself a socialist) and Bernie Sanders (who wears the label proudly). In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn,
who was trounced at the polls in mid-December, has set his sights on a longer list of industries, including the water, energy, and internet providers.
Other items on the socialist wish list may include allowing the government to be the primary
investor in the economy through massive infrastructure projects that aim to replace fossil fuels
with renewables, as Green New Deal socialists have proposed. They’ve also floated plans that would
make the government the employer of a majority of Americans by offering guaranteed well-paid
jobs that people can’t be fired from. And then there are more limited proposals, including installing more
workers on the boards of private companies and instituting national rent controls and high
minimum wages.
For their part, modern capitalists want some, but less, state intervention. They are skeptical of nationalization and price controls; they argue that today’s economic problems are
best addressed by harnessing private enterprise. In the United States, they’ve argued for more regulation and progressive taxation to help ease inequality, incentives to
encourage private firms to use less carbon, and a more robust welfare state through tax credits. Over the past 15 years, meanwhile, capitalist Europeans have instituted reforms
to improve labor market flexibility by making it easier to hire and fire people, and there have been attempts to reduce the size of pensions.
No economic system is perfect, and the exact right balance between markets and the state may never be found. But there are
good reasons to believe that keeping capital in the hands of the private sector, and empowering
its owners to make decisions in the pursuit of profit, is the best we’ve got.
One reason to trust markets is that they are better at setting prices than people. If you set prices
too high, many a socialist government has found, citizens will be needlessly deprived of goods.
Set them too low, and there will be excessive demand and ensuing shortages. This is true for all
goods, including health care and labor. And there is little reason to believe that the next batch of socialists in Washington or
London would be any better at setting prices than their predecessors . In fact, government-run health

care systems in Canada and European countries are plagued by long wait times. A 2018 Fraser Institute study
cites a median wait time of 19.8 weeks to see a specialist physician in Canada. Socialists may argue that is a small price to pay for universal access, but a market-

based approach can deliver both coverage and responsive service. A full government takeover
isn’t the only option, nor is it the best one.
 markets are also good at rationing risk. Fundamentally, socialists would like to reduce risk
Beyond that,

—protect workers from any personal or economywide shock. That is a noble goal, and some
reduction through better functioning safety nets is desirable. But getting rid of all
uncertainty—as state ownership of most industries would imply—is a bad idea. Risk is what fuels
growth that’s why the top nine names on the Forbes 400
. People who take more chances tend to reap bigger rewards;

list of the richest Americans are not heirs to family dynasties but are self-made entrepreneurs who took a leap to build new products and
created many jobs in the process.
Some leftist economists like Mariana Mazzucato argue that governments might be able to step in and become
laboratories for innovation. But that would be a historical anomaly; socialist-leaning governments have typically
been less innovative than others. After all, bureaucrats and worker-corporate boards have little incentive to

upset the status quo or compete to build a better widget. And even when government programs
have spurred innovation—as in the case of the internet—it took the private sector to recognize
the value and create a market.
And that brings us to a third reason to believe in markets: productivity. Some economists, such as Robert Gordon, have

looked to today’s economic problems and suggested that productivity growth—the engine that fueled so much of
the progress of the last several decades—is over. In this telling, the resources, products, and systems that underpin the world’s economy are all optimized, and little further
progress is possible.
that is hard to square with reality. Innovation helps economies do more with fewer
But

resources—increasingly critical to addressing climate change, for example—which is a form of

productivity growth. And likewise, many of the products and technologies people rely on every day did
not exist a few years ago. These goods make inaccessible services more available and are changing the
nature of work, often for the better. Such gains are made possible by capitalist systems that
encourage invention and growing the pie, not by socialist systems that are more concerned with
how the existing pie is cut. It is far too soon, in other words, to write off productivity.
Here, it is worth considering the lessons of a previous productivity boom: the Industrial
Revolution. As the economist Joel Mokyr has shown, it took new innovations like the steam engine more than 100
years to appear in productivity estimates. The same could be happening today with smartphones
and the internet. Meanwhile, even as that upheaval transformed the human experience, creating a more comfortable existence for most everyone, it was also messy
and disruptive. The early part of that innovative cycle—like others since—displaced existing workers while the gains flowed to the owners of capital first, causing social
instability.
This time around, the effects may end up being less wrenching: The divisions between owners of
capital and workers are not as clear as they used to be. More Americans than ever own stock
through their workplace retirement accounts. Stock ownership is on the rise in many non-U.S.
capitalist economies, too. And several other countries, such as Australia and the United
Kingdom, also offer retirement accounts, making their citizens shareholders as well. Unlike 200
years ago, workers’ interests are already more aligned with those of management.
Stock ownership in retirement accounts hints at the kinds of market-friendly policies that
can share wealth while preserving innovation and risk-taking. In the United States, there is room to
make taxes more progressive, especially when it comes to estate taxes, and to close tax
loopholes that make it easier for companies to exploit the system. The social safety net could be expanded to include jobs
retraining, an enhanced earned income tax credit, and grants to innovate or work remotely in smaller cities or more rural areas. And the health care industry is indeed in need of
reform.
More generally,capitalism can be made more inclusive, and government programs can help smooth its
rough edges. But none of these changes require governments to take over entire
industries. Depending on the market, the reform could be a less intrusive government option, subsidy, or
sometimes just better accountability.
Most fundamentally, inequality is tolerable if the poor have a shot at becoming rich, too . That shot has never been so great

as the American dream in particular promised, but there is little evidence that economic mobility has actually gotten worse in recent years. Still, to avoid

greater instability—and to ensure the greatest possible buy-in for the capitalist system—today’s
business and political leaders can do more to make sure everyone at least has a chance to roll the
dice. Here, education reform and development of rural areas are necessary to close the gap.
And that’s not socialism—it’s building off capitalism and making better use of today’s and
tomorrow’s workers.